Social philosophers (33)

  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Confucius

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.

    1 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marcus Aurelius

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.

    25 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Peter Kropotkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest

    24 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • The Buddha

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.

    14 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

    13 May 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Xenophon

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.

    26 May 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill

     
  • Philosophers of culture (31)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Confucius

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.

    1 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Iris Murdoch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

    21 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Sun Tzu and The Art of War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.

    1 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Philosophers of history (29)

  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Ibn Khaldun

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.

    4 February 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy

     
  • Iris Murdoch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

    21 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Montesquieu

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.

    14 June 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

    13 May 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson

     
  • Philosophers of mind (28)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Elizabeth Anscombe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.

    22 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachael Wiseman, Constantine Sandis, Roger Teichmann

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marcus Aurelius

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.

    25 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Roger Bacon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.

    20 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • The Buddha

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.

    14 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

    13 May 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Philosophers of education (28)

  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Confucius

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.

    1 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Jan Amos Komenský

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Czech man who tried to use education to build a better understanding between the peoples of Europe who were otherwise divided by religious wars.

    19 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Vladimir Urbanek, Suzanna Ivanic, Howard Hotson

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Montaigne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.

    25 April 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • Socrates

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.

    27 September 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Sun Tzu and The Art of War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.

    1 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • Philosophers of science (26)

  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Bishop Berkeley

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.

    20 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Montaigne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.

    25 April 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Robert Boyle

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.

    12 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos

     
  • Roger Bacon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.

    20 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

    13 May 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson

     
  • Philosophers of religion (24)

  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Heraclitus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.

    8 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

    13 May 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson

     
  • Fellows of the Royal Society (21)

  • Alan Turing

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.

    15 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges

     
  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.

    21 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton

     
  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Booth's Life and Labour Survey

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's ambitious project to discover how many people in late Victorian London were living in poverty, and understand why

    10 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Griffin, Sarah Wise, Lawrence Goldman

     
  • Brunel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Victorian engineer responsible for bridges, tunnels and railways still in use today.

    13 November 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Julia Elton, Ben Marsden, Crosbie Smith

     
  • Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.

    30 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans

     
  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Dorothy Hodgkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.

    3 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara

     
  • Edward Gibbon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.

    17 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien

     
  • John Dalton

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss scientist John Dalton, who pioneered the development of atomic theory and carried out research into meteorology and colour blindness.

    27 October 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Bennett, Aileen Fyfe, James Sumner

     
  • Linnaeus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering 18th century Swedish botanist, who devised a method of naming species and a new system for classifying plants and animals.

    20 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Staffan Müller-Wille, Stella Sandford, Steve Jones

     
  • Maxwell

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.

    2 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Montesquieu

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.

    14 June 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore

     
  • Paul Dirac

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.

    5 March 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman

     
  • Pierre-Simon Laplace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication

    8 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal

     
  • Pitt Rivers

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the Victorian anthropologist and archaeologist Augustus Pitt-Rivers.

    28 February 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Richard Bradley, Dan Hicks

     
  • The Needham Question

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Needham Question, which asks why China’s medieval technological advancement was overtaken by that of a relative backwater called Europe.

    19 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Chris Cullen, Tim Barrett, Frances Wood

     
  • Voyages of James Cook

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the science behind Capt James Cook's three voyages of discovery, from 1768 to 1779, one of over a thousand ideas suggested by listeners.

    3 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Rebekah Higgitt, Sophie Forgan

     
  • William and Caroline Herschel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.

    11 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett

     
  • Anglican saints (21)

  • Alcuin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the cleric, educator and poet from York who put learning for its own sake at the heart of the Carolingian Renaissance

    30 January 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Joanna Story, Andy Orchard, Mary Garrison

     
  • Alfred and the Battle of Edington

    Melvyn Bragg discusses King Alfred, the defeat of the Vikings at Battle of Edington and Alfred's project to create a culture of Englishness.

    7 April 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, John Hines

     
  • Christina Rossetti

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.

    1 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton

     
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.

    27 September 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs

     
  • Frederick Douglass

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the prominent abolitionist, who in 1845 told his story in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

    9 February 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Karen Salt, Nicholas Guyatt

     
  • George Fox and the Quakers

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.

    5 April 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters

     
  • Hildegard of Bingen

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.

    26 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum

     
  • Johannes Kepler

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.

    29 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Ulinka Rublack, Adam Mosley

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • John Wesley and Methodism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world

    10 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson

     
  • Johnson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.

    27 October 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley

     
  • Margery Kempe and English Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Margery Kempe (1373-1438), the English mystic who went to Jerusalem and dictated her life story, said to be the first autobiography in English.

    2 June 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Bale

     
  • Mary Magdalene

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Magdalene, one of the best-known figures in the Bible.

    25 February 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Joanne Anderson, Eamon Duffy, Joan Taylor

     
  • Octavia Hill

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.

    7 April 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley

     
  • Saint Cuthbert

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life of the Northumbrian monk, priest and hermit who lived on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and became one of England's most revered saints.

    28 January 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Hawkes, Sarah Foot, John Hines

     
  • St Hilda

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Hilda, who led a large and influential network of monasteries in 7th century Britain.

    5 April 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Blair, Rosemary Cramp, Sarah Foot

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • The Venerable Bede

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.

    25 November 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown

     
  • Thomas Becket

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Becket, chancellor turned archbishop, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral and whose tomb became a centre of pilgrimage across Europe.

    14 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Michael Staunton, Danica Summerlin

     
  • Wilberforce

    In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.

    22 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • Wyclif and the Lollards

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval philosopher and theologian John Wyclif and his followers, the Lollards.

    16 June 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Anne Hudson, Rob Lutton

     
  • Epistemologists (21)

  • Al-Ghazali

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, one of the most significant and influential philosophers of the Middle Ages.

    19 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Gleave

     
  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Bishop Berkeley

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.

    20 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

    13 May 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Ontologists (20)

  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Heraclitus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.

    8 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

    13 May 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Writers about activism and social change (18)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • Metaphysicians (18)

  • Al-Ghazali

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, one of the most significant and influential philosophers of the Middle Ages.

    19 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Gleave

     
  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Roger Bacon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.

    20 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

    13 May 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Philosophy writers (18)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Galen

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman physician and medical theorist Galen.

    10 October 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Vivian Nutton, Helen King, Caroline Petit

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Iris Murdoch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

    21 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Marcus Aurelius

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.

    25 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Peter Kropotkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest

    24 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Philosophers of literature (18)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Iris Murdoch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

    21 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Roger Bacon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.

    20 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • Theorists on Western civilization (18)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Edward Gibbon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.

    17 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Political philosophers (18)

  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Lenin

    Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.

    16 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev

     
  • Marcus Aurelius

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.

    25 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Sun Tzu and The Art of War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.

    1 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • British novels adapted into films (17)

  • A Christmas Carol

    From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.

    16 December 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch

     
  • Animal Farm

    4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.

    29 September 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls

     
  • Decline and Fall

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Evelyn Waugh's comic novel Decline and Fall, published when the author was 25.

    21 February 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, John Bowen, Ann Pasternak Slater

     
  • Emma

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, which features, according to Austen, 'a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like'.

    19 November 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, John Mullan, Emma Clery

     
  • Frankenstein

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge

    16 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas

     
  • Heart of Darkness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century

    15 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies

     
  • Jane Eyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

    18 June 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons

     
  • Mrs Dalloway

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway, published in 1925.

    3 July 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hermione Lee, Jane Goldman, Kathryn Simpson

     
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you

    15 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen

     
  • Persuasion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's final completed novel: the story of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, their broken engagement and their chance meeting 8 years later.

    22 December 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Fiona Stafford, Paddy Bullard

     
  • Robinson Crusoe

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success and is considered the classic adventure story.

    22 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley, Bob Owens

     
  • Silas Marner

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch and Valentine Cunningham discuss George Eliot's 1861 novel Silas Marner.

    28 January 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch, Valentine Cunningham

     
  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.

    5 May 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas

     
  • The Riddle of the Sands

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the prescient thriller ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ and the decline Anglo-German relations before the First World War.

    12 June 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard J. Evans, Rosemary Ashton, T. C. W. Blanning

     
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.

    30 September 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen

     
  • The Time Machine

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and anxieties in late Victorian London, explored by HG Wells in his story of time travel, evolution and a planet unfit for humans.

    17 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Amanda Rees, Simon James

     
  • Wuthering Heights

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.

    28 September 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis

     
  • Philosophers of art (17)

  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (16)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.

    30 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans

     
  • Dorothy Hodgkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.

    3 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara

     
  • Elizabeth Anscombe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.

    22 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachael Wiseman, Constantine Sandis, Roger Teichmann

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • Iris Murdoch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

    21 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson

     
  • John Dalton

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss scientist John Dalton, who pioneered the development of atomic theory and carried out research into meteorology and colour blindness.

    27 October 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Bennett, Aileen Fyfe, James Sumner

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Pierre-Simon Laplace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication

    8 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal

     
  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Washington and the American Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.

    24 June 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick

     
  • William and Caroline Herschel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.

    11 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett

     
  • Philosophers of language (15)

  • Abelard and Heloise

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.

    5 May 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy

     
  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Elizabeth Anscombe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.

    22 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachael Wiseman, Constantine Sandis, Roger Teichmann

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Roger Bacon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.

    20 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • English male poets (15)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works of Hopkins, unpublished in his lifetime, who FR Leavis called 'the only influential poet of the Victorian age and the greatest'.

    21 March 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catherine Phillips, Jane Wright, Martin Dubois

     
  • John Clare

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Clare, the 'Northamptonshire peasant poet', whose writing was as celebrated as his life was humble.

    9 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Mina Gorji, Simon Kövesi

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Marlowe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Christopher Marlowe; a forger, a brawler, a spy, but above all a playwright, a poet and the most celebrated writer of his generation.

    7 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate, Emma J. Smith

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Pope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.

    9 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold

     
  • Shakespeare and Literary Criticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.

    4 March 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose

     
  • Shakespeare's Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.

    15 March 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo

     
  • Shakespeare's Work

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.

    11 May 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • The Scriblerus Club

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Scriblerus Club which included some of the sharpest satirists of the 18th century.

    9 June 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Marcus Walsh

     
  • Wilfred Owen

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Britain's greatest war poets, who published only 5 poems in his short life yet whose works became seen as a warning of the futility of wars.

    27 October 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Potter, Fran Brearton, Guy Cuthbertson

     
  • Critics of religions (15)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Edward Gibbon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.

    17 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Lenin

    Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.

    16 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Socrates

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.

    27 September 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Novels adapted into operas (14)

  • A Christmas Carol

    From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.

    16 December 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch

     
  • Death in Venice

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mann's infamous novella of 1912, exploring the link between creativity and self-destruction.

    15 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karolina Watroba, Erica Wickerson, Sean Williams

     
  • Don Quixote

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the importance, originality and enduring appeal of Cervantes’ classic 17th century Spanish novel Don Quixote, a cornerstone of Western literature.

    16 March 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Ife, Edwin Williamson, Jane Whetnall

     
  • Eugene Onegin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), often described as his masterpiece, which tells the tragic story of Onegin, Lensky and Tatyana.

    22 June 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Kahn, Emily Finer, Simon Dixon

     
  • Great Gatsby

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.

    14 January 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek

     
  • Journey to the West

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the much loved Chinese novel from 1592, featuring Monkey, Tripitaka, Sandy and Pigsy, as they travel to India to bring back Buddhist texts.

    20 May 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Julia Lovell, Chiung-yun Evelyn Liu, Craig Clunas

     
  • Madame Bovary

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the literary sensation caused by the trial for indecency of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary.

    12 July 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andy Martin, Mary Orr, Robert Gildea

     
  • Moby Dick

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, the story of Ahab and the white whale, the most popular of around 1,000 ideas that listeners submitted.

    7 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Bridget Bennett, Katie McGettigan, Graham Thompson

     
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you

    15 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen

     
  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.

    5 May 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas

     
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.

    30 September 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen

     
  • Tristram Shandy

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.

    24 April 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Hawley, John Mullan, Mary Newbould

     
  • Voltaire's Candide

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's satirical novel Candide, first published in 1759.

    3 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Nicholas Cronk, Caroline Warman

     
  • Wuthering Heights

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.

    28 September 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis

     
  • Concepts in astronomy (14)

  • Black Holes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Black Holes, the dead collapsed ghosts of massive stars.

    12 April 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Martin Ward

     
  • Comets

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss comets, the 'dirty snowballs' of the solar system which orbit the sun.

    17 January 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Paul Murdin, Don Pollacco

     
  • Cosmic rays

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss cosmic rays, the mysterious high-energy particles that constantly bombard Earth.

    16 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Alan Watson, Tim Greenshaw

     
  • Dark Energy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the recently discovered, and mysteriously named, 'dark energy' which may make up 70% of the universe.

    17 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Roger Penrose

     
  • Dark matter

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that is believed to make up most of the universe.

    12 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Gresham Professor of Astronomy Carlos Frenk, Anne Green

     
  • Eclipses

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the progress in our understanding of eclipses from the ancient world onwards and how their predictability illuminates historical records and myths.

    31 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Frank Close, Lucie Green

     
  • Exoplanets

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss exoplanets, planets detected outside our solar system.

    3 October 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Don Pollacco, Suzanne Aigrain

     
  • Galaxies

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the galaxies; spread out across the void of space like spun sugar, but harbouring in their centres super-massive black holes.

    29 June 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Gribbin, Carolin Crawford, Robert Kennicutt

     
  • Gravitational Waves

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Gravitational Waves, mysterious phenomena that ripple the fabric of space-time.

    17 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Al-Khalili, Carolin Crawford, Sheila Rowan

     
  • The Age of the Universe

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss a question which has obsessed cosmologists for millennia: how old is the Universe?

    3 March 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Carlos Frenk

     
  • The Death of Stars

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how so much in the Universe, and much of our understanding of it, depends on changes in stars as they die after millions or billions of stable years

    9 June 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Mark Sullivan

     
  • The Life of Stars

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life cycle of stars. They are born among vast swirls of gas and dust and they die in stunning explosions.

    27 Mar 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Murdin, Janna Levin, Phil Charles

     
  • The Planets

    Melvyn Bragg discusses our knowledge of the planets in both our and other solar systems. What causes them to form and what is the likelihood of there being another with properties similar to Earth’s?

    27 May 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Murdin, Hugh Jones, Carolin Crawford

     
  • The Universe's Origins

    Melvyn Bragg examines the way thinking about the origins of the universe changed in the 20th century. Are we any closer to knowing whether other worlds exist and how our planet came into being?

    20 May 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Paul Davies

     
  • British novels adapted into television shows (13)

  • A Christmas Carol

    From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.

    16 December 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch

     
  • Animal Farm

    4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.

    29 September 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls

     
  • Emma

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, which features, according to Austen, 'a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like'.

    19 November 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, John Mullan, Emma Clery

     
  • Frankenstein

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge

    16 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas

     
  • Heart of Darkness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century

    15 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies

     
  • Jane Eyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

    18 June 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons

     
  • Middlemarch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's Study of Provincial Life, set before the Reform Act 1832 in a small, fictional town in the Midlands surrounded by farmland.

    18 April 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Kathryn Hughes, John Bowen

     
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you

    15 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen

     
  • Persuasion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's final completed novel: the story of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, their broken engagement and their chance meeting 8 years later.

    22 December 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Fiona Stafford, Paddy Bullard

     
  • Robinson Crusoe

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success and is considered the classic adventure story.

    22 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley, Bob Owens

     
  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.

    5 May 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas

     
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.

    30 September 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen

     
  • Wuthering Heights

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.

    28 September 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis

     
  • Members of the American Philosophical Society (12)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • Linnaeus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering 18th century Swedish botanist, who devised a method of naming species and a new system for classifying plants and animals.

    20 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Staffan Müller-Wille, Stella Sandford, Steve Jones

     
  • Louis Pasteur

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.

    18 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Paul Dirac

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.

    5 March 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman

     
  • President Ulysses S Grant

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Grant's role in rebuilding America in the decade after the Civil War and his impact on African-Americans and Native Americans.

    30 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Erik Mathisen, Susan-Mary Grant, Robert Cook

     
  • Rutherford

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.

    19 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara

     
  • Thomas Edison

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.

    9 December 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Washington and the American Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.

    24 June 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick

     
  • Critics of the Catholic Church (12)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Erasmus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most significant figures of the Renaissance.

    9 February 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, Jill Kraye

     
  • Garibaldi and the Risorgimento

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Giuseppe Garibaldi and his role in unifying Italy which, with his Red Shirts, he achieved substantially in 1861 and entirely in 1870.

    1 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lucy Riall, Eugenio Biagini, David Laven

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Wyclif and the Lollards

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval philosopher and theologian John Wyclif and his followers, the Lollards.

    16 June 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Anne Hudson, Rob Lutton

     
  • Sonneteers (12)

  • Christina Rossetti

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.

    1 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton

     
  • Federico Garcia Lorca

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, executed by Franco's forces, his body unrecovered.

    4 July 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Maria Delgado, Federico Bonaddio, Sarah Wright

     
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works of Hopkins, unpublished in his lifetime, who FR Leavis called 'the only influential poet of the Victorian age and the greatest'.

    21 March 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catherine Phillips, Jane Wright, Martin Dubois

     
  • John Clare

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Clare, the 'Northamptonshire peasant poet', whose writing was as celebrated as his life was humble.

    9 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Mina Gorji, Simon Kövesi

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Shakespeare and Literary Criticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.

    4 March 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose

     
  • Shakespeare's Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.

    15 March 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo

     
  • Shakespeare's Work

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.

    11 May 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • Enlightenment philosophers (12)

  • Bishop Berkeley

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.

    20 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Montesquieu

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.

    14 June 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore

     
  • Moses Mendelssohn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Moses Mendelssohn, one of the greatest thinkers of the German Enlightenment.

    22 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christopher Clark, Abigail Green, Adam Sutcliffe

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Writers about religion and science (12)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Robert Boyle

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.

    12 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • Christian terminology (12)

  • Arianism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a widely shared form of Christianity, followed in the Roman empire and by the Goths across its borders, that became an infamous heresy.

    15 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Herrin, Robin Whelan, Martin Palmer

     
  • Baltic Crusades

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fight, led by orders such as the Teutonic Knights and supported by the popes, to convert pagans in what became known as the Baltic Crusades.

    24 November 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Aleks Pluskowski, Nora Berend, Martin Palmer

     
  • Early Christian Martyrdom

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the lives of martyrs in the first three centuries of Christianity and how Eusebius presented their stories once the Roman Empire became Christian.

    28 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Candida Moss, Kate Cooper, James Corke-Webster

     
  • Paganism in the Renaissance

    Melvyn Bragg discusses paganism in the Renaissance and the return of classical pagan thought to Italy and then to the rest of Europe in the 15th century.

    16 June 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Thomas Healy, Charles Hope, Evelyn Welch

     
  • Purgatory

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Purgatory as an idea and, from C12th, as a place imagined alongside Heaven and Hell where souls of sinners would be purged by fire.

    25 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Matthew Treherne, Helen Foxhall Forbes

     
  • The Fall

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the idea of original sin and its impact on politics, gender and notions of morality in western culture, examining Augustine, Milton, the Masaccio frescoes and Charles Darwin.

    8 April 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, Griselda Pollock, John Carey

     
  • The Holy Grail

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the sacred allure of the Holy Grail which has fascinated writers for a thousand years.

    15 May 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Jonathan Riley-Smith, Juliette Wood

     
  • The Nicene Creed

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nicene Creed, a statement of essential faith that established the Divinity of Christ and has been spoken for over 1600 years in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Churches

    27 December 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, Caroline Humfress, Andrew Louth

     
  • The Pelagian Controversy

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Pelagian Controversy, one of the most significant doctrinal disputes of the early church.

    21 April 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, Caroline Humfress, John Milbank

     
  • The Rapture

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of the idea developed by John Nelson Darby that believers will vanish suddenly, 'to meet the Lord in the air' before the Second Coming

    26 September 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Elizabeth Phillips, Crawford Gribben, Nicholas Guyatt

     
  • The Schism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses events surrounding the 11th century division of medieval Christendom into what became the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

    16 October 2003

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    Featuring: Henrietta Leyser, Norman Housley, Jonathan Shepard

     
  • The Trinity

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the doctrine of the Trinity, the idea of a threefold God, which lies at the heart of Christianity.

    13 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Soskice, Martin Palmer, The Reverend Graham Ward

     
  • Recipients of the Copley Medal (12)

  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.

    21 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton

     
  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.

    30 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans

     
  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Dorothy Hodgkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.

    3 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara

     
  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • Louis Pasteur

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.

    18 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Paul Dirac

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.

    5 March 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman

     
  • Rutherford

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.

    19 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara

     
  • Voyages of James Cook

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the science behind Capt James Cook's three voyages of discovery, from 1768 to 1779, one of over a thousand ideas suggested by listeners.

    3 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Rebekah Higgitt, Sophie Forgan

     
  • William and Caroline Herschel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.

    11 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett

     
  • English essayists (12)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Edward Gibbon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.

    17 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien

     
  • Fanny Burney

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.

    23 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan

     
  • John Ruskin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.

    31 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini

     
  • Johnson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.

    27 October 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Pope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.

    9 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold

     
  • William Hazlitt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Bate, Uttara Natarajan and AC Grayling discuss the life and works of William Hazlitt.

    8 April 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, A. C. Grayling, Uttara Natarajan

     
  • Aphorists (12)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Confucius

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.

    1 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Kafka's The Trial

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.

    27 November 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Pascal

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.

    19 September 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Sun Tzu and The Art of War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.

    1 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos

     
  • Solar System (11)

  • Asteroids

    Melvyn Bragg discusses asteroids, once regarded as “the vermin of the solar system” but now viewed as key to our understanding of the beginning of time.

    3 November 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, John Zarnecki

     
  • Astronomy and Empire

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the relationship between astronomy and the British Empire, how astronomical science provided a means for navigation and British naval control.

    4 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kristen Lippincott, Allan Chapman

     
  • Comets

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss comets, the 'dirty snowballs' of the solar system which orbit the sun.

    17 January 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Paul Murdin, Don Pollacco

     
  • Jupiter

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the largest planet in our solar system.

    29 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Michele Dougherty, Leigh Fletcher, Carolin Crawford

     
  • Mars

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet Mars. Named after the Roman god of war, Mars has been a source of continual fascination.

    11 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Zarnecki, Colin Pillinger, Monica Grady

     
  • Saturn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Saturn, the most distant planet easily visible to the human eye, with over 60 moons and, with its rings, one of the most striking sights in space.

    14 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Michele Dougherty, Andrew Coates

     
  • The Kuiper belt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Kuiper Belt region, home to Pluto and countless remnants from the beginnings of our solar system.

    2 March 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Monica Grady, Stephen Lowry

     
  • The Moon

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the origins, science and mythology of the moon. Man may have landed on the moon, but our 'twin planet' in many ways still remains a mystery.

    3 November 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Murdin, Carolin Crawford, Ian Crawford

     
  • The Planets

    Melvyn Bragg discusses our knowledge of the planets in both our and other solar systems. What causes them to form and what is the likelihood of there being another with properties similar to Earth’s?

    27 May 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Murdin, Hugh Jones, Carolin Crawford

     
  • The Sun

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the science of the sun, source of all our energy.

    10 July 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Yvonne Elsworth, Louise Harra

     
  • Venus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Earth's neighbouring planet, once thought very similar but now known to be extremely volcanic with a surface temperature of 450C.

    27 December 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Colin Wilson, Andrew Coates

     
  • British novels adapted into plays (11)

  • A Christmas Carol

    From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.

    16 December 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch

     
  • Animal Farm

    4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.

    29 September 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls

     
  • Emma

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, which features, according to Austen, 'a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like'.

    19 November 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, John Mullan, Emma Clery

     
  • Frankenstein

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge

    16 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas

     
  • Jane Eyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

    18 June 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons

     
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you

    15 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen

     
  • Persuasion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's final completed novel: the story of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, their broken engagement and their chance meeting 8 years later.

    22 December 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Fiona Stafford, Paddy Bullard

     
  • Robinson Crusoe

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success and is considered the classic adventure story.

    22 December 2011

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    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley, Bob Owens

     
  • Silas Marner

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch and Valentine Cunningham discuss George Eliot's 1861 novel Silas Marner.

    28 January 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch, Valentine Cunningham

     
  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.

    5 May 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas

     
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.

    30 September 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen

     
  • Philosophers of law (11)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Confucius

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.

    1 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Marcus Aurelius

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.

    25 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Montesquieu

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.

    14 June 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • Burials at Westminster Abbey (11)

  • Aphra Behn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.

    12 October 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch

     
  • Chaucer

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Geoffrey Chaucer who immortalised the medieval pilgrimage and the diversity of 14th century English society, in his Canterbury Tales.

    9 February 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Helen Cooper, Ardis Butterfield

     
  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Johnson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.

    27 October 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley

     
  • Mary, Queen of Scots

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who might have united the French, English and Scottish thrones.

    19 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Forsyth, Anna Groundwater, John Guy

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Rutherford

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.

    19 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara

     
  • The Death of Elizabeth I

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarch became King in the face of plots and plague.

    15 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Guy, Clare Jackson, Helen Hackett

     
  • Thomas Hardy's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.

    13 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong

     
  • Wilberforce

    In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.

    22 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • Age of Enlightenment (11)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Frederick the Great

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.

    2 July 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Ludwig van Beethoven

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of Beethoven, from Bonn to Vienna, where he became one of the great composers, despite his growing deafness.

    21 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Tunbridge, John Deathridge, Erica Buurman

     
  • Robert Hooke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Robert Hooke, the 17th-century scientist with a wide variety of interests from elasticity to microscopes who fell out with Newton.

    18 February 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Patricia Fara, Rob Iliffe

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • The Encyclopédie

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the French encyclopédie, one of the great achievements of the Enlightenment with contributors such as Voltaire, Rousseau, D’Alembert and Dennis Diderot.

    26 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Hawley, Caroline Warman, David Wootton

     
  • The Enlightenment in Britain

    Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.

    18 January 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black

     
  • The Scottish Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the emergence and impact of the Scottish Enlightenment which was led by the philosopher David Hume and the father of modern economics, Adam Smith.

    5 December 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tom Devine, Karen O'Brien, Alexander Broadie

     
  • Women and Enlightenment Science

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the role played by women in Enlightenment science.

    4 November 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley

     
  • Romanticism (11)

  • 1848: Year of Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 1848, the year that saw Europe engulfed in revolution. Governments from Paris to Palermo were toppled, but the effects were not to last.

    19 January 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Lucy Riall, Mike Rapport

     
  • Bohemianism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how a 19th century Parisian artistic philosophy re-emerged in the 20th century in the drawing rooms of Bloomsbury and Chelsea, as a lifestyle choice for a middle-class clique.

    9 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hermione Lee, Virginia Nicholson, Graham Robb

     
  • Frankenstein

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge

    16 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas

     
  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Sturm und Drang

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the 18th-century German artistic movement known as Sturm und Drang, whose best-known exponents included Goethe and Schiller.

    14 October 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: T. C. W. Blanning, Susanne Kord, Maike Oergel

     
  • The Brothers Grimm

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm and what they can tell us about the German imagination and 19th-century romantic nationalism.

    5 February 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliette Wood, Marina Warner, Tony Phelan

     
  • The Later Romantics

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the poetry and idealism of Byron, Shelley and Keats, who all had unconventional lifestyles, strong affinities with southern Europe and classical Greece, and who all died young.

    15 April 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Robert Woof, Jennifer Wallace

     
  • The Romantics

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the ideals and legacy of Romanticism, a literary and artistic movement at the turn of the 19th century which gave rise to the great poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.

    12 October 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Rosemary Ashton, Nicholas Roe

     
  • The Sublime

    Melvyn Bragg discusses a transcendental idea that 18th century British artists, poets, philosophers and scientists seized upon and adapted to the intellectual and physical landscape.

    12 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, Annie Janowitz, Peter de Bolla

     
  • Wagner

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, and legacy of the German composer Richard Wagner, mentor of Nietzsche and disciple of Schopenhauer, who changed the face of 19th century opera.

    20 June 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Deathridge, Lucy Beckett, Michael Tanner

     
  • English male non-fiction writers (10)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Booth's Life and Labour Survey

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's ambitious project to discover how many people in late Victorian London were living in poverty, and understand why

    10 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Griffin, Sarah Wise, Lawrence Goldman

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Edward Gibbon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.

    17 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Polidori's The Vampyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.

    07 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady

     
  • Pope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.

    9 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold

     
  • Sir Thomas Browne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and language of Browne (1605-82), a doctor sharing his personal views on science, history and religion at a time of great change

    6 June 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Claire Preston, Jessica Wolfe, Kevin Killeen

     
  • German male non-fiction writers (10)

  • Clausewitz and On War

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.

    17 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Moses Mendelssohn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Moses Mendelssohn, one of the greatest thinkers of the German Enlightenment.

    22 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christopher Clark, Abigail Green, Adam Sutcliffe

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • Philosophers of logic (10)

  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Philosophers of social science (10)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Sun Tzu and The Art of War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.

    1 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Novels adapted into comics (10)

  • Animal Farm

    4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.

    29 September 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls

     
  • Don Quixote

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the importance, originality and enduring appeal of Cervantes’ classic 17th century Spanish novel Don Quixote, a cornerstone of Western literature.

    16 March 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Ife, Edwin Williamson, Jane Whetnall

     
  • Emma

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, which features, according to Austen, 'a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like'.

    19 November 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, John Mullan, Emma Clery

     
  • Frankenstein

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge

    16 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas

     
  • Great Gatsby

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.

    14 January 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek

     
  • Moby Dick

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, the story of Ahab and the white whale, the most popular of around 1,000 ideas that listeners submitted.

    7 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Bridget Bennett, Katie McGettigan, Graham Thompson

     
  • Robinson Crusoe

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success and is considered the classic adventure story.

    22 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley, Bob Owens

     
  • Romance of the Three Kingdoms

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Romance of the Three Kingdoms, widely regarded as one of the greatest works of Chinese literature.

    27 June 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Craig Clunas, Margaret Hillenbrand

     
  • Tristram Shandy

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.

    24 April 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Hawley, John Mullan, Mary Newbould

     
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', the bestselling American novel of the 19th century which has slavery as its central theme.

    8 June 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Sarah Meer, Clive Webb

     
  • Christian humanists (10)

  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.

    27 September 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs

     
  • Erasmus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most significant figures of the Renaissance.

    9 February 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, Jill Kraye

     
  • John Wesley and Methodism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world

    10 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Montaigne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.

    25 April 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green

     
  • Pascal

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.

    19 September 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Wilberforce

    In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.

    22 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • Wyclif and the Lollards

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval philosopher and theologian John Wyclif and his followers, the Lollards.

    16 June 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Anne Hudson, Rob Lutton

     
  • Novels adapted into ballets (9)

  • A Christmas Carol

    From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.

    16 December 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch

     
  • Death in Venice

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mann's infamous novella of 1912, exploring the link between creativity and self-destruction.

    15 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karolina Watroba, Erica Wickerson, Sean Williams

     
  • Don Quixote

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the importance, originality and enduring appeal of Cervantes’ classic 17th century Spanish novel Don Quixote, a cornerstone of Western literature.

    16 March 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Ife, Edwin Williamson, Jane Whetnall

     
  • Eugene Onegin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), often described as his masterpiece, which tells the tragic story of Onegin, Lensky and Tatyana.

    22 June 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Kahn, Emily Finer, Simon Dixon

     
  • Frankenstein

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge

    16 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas

     
  • Great Gatsby

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.

    14 January 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek

     
  • Jane Eyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

    18 June 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons

     
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you

    15 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen

     
  • Wuthering Heights

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.

    28 September 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis

     
  • Foreign associates of the National Academy of Sciences (9)

  • Dorothy Hodgkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.

    3 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara

     
  • Louis Pasteur

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.

    18 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Paul Dirac

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.

    5 March 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman

     
  • Paul Erdős

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the highly prolific, itinerant 20th century Hungarian mathematician, who enjoyed an unrivalled reputation for problem-solving.

    23 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Colva Roney-Dougal, Timothy Gowers, Andrew Treglown

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Rutherford

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.

    19 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara

     
  • The Needham Question

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Needham Question, which asks why China’s medieval technological advancement was overtaken by that of a relative backwater called Europe.

    19 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Chris Cullen, Tim Barrett, Frances Wood

     
  • Censored books (9)

  • Animal Farm

    4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.

    29 September 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls

     
  • Frankenstein

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge

    16 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas

     
  • James Joyce's Ulysses

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's celebrated novel Ulysses.

    14 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Jeri Johnson, Richard Brown

     
  • Madame Bovary

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the literary sensation caused by the trial for indecency of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary.

    12 July 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andy Martin, Mary Orr, Robert Gildea

     
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you

    15 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen

     
  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.

    5 May 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas

     
  • The Encyclopédie

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the French encyclopédie, one of the great achievements of the Enlightenment with contributors such as Voltaire, Rousseau, D’Alembert and Dennis Diderot.

    26 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Hawley, Caroline Warman, David Wootton

     
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', the bestselling American novel of the 19th century which has slavery as its central theme.

    8 June 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Sarah Meer, Clive Webb

     
  • Voltaire's Candide

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's satirical novel Candide, first published in 1759.

    3 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Nicholas Cronk, Caroline Warman

     
  • 19th-century German male writers (9)

  • Clausewitz and On War

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.

    17 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • The Brothers Grimm

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm and what they can tell us about the German imagination and 19th-century romantic nationalism.

    5 February 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliette Wood, Marina Warner, Tony Phelan

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • 20th-century atheists (9)

  • Alan Turing

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.

    15 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Iris Murdoch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

    21 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson

     
  • Lenin

    Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.

    16 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Peter Kropotkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest

    24 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Jewish philosophers (9)

  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Moses Mendelssohn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Moses Mendelssohn, one of the greatest thinkers of the German Enlightenment.

    22 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christopher Clark, Abigail Green, Adam Sutcliffe

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Rosa Luxemburg

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.

    13 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Atheist philosophers (9)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Iris Murdoch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

    21 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson

     
  • Lenin

    Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.

    16 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • Metaphilosophers (9)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • English people of Scottish descent (9)

  • Ada Lovelace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century mathematician and hard living daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.

    6 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi

     
  • Alan Turing

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.

    15 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges

     
  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.

    21 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.

    9 March 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow

     
  • John Ruskin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.

    31 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Voyages of James Cook

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the science behind Capt James Cook's three voyages of discovery, from 1768 to 1779, one of over a thousand ideas suggested by listeners.

    3 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Rebekah Higgitt, Sophie Forgan

     
  • Writers from Paris (9)

  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • George Sand

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand

    6 February 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness

     
  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • Novels first published in serial form (9)

  • Crime and Punishment

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dostoevsky's novel in which Raskolnikov is mediocre but thinks he's superior and his future more important than the lives of the women he kills

    14 November 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Huspith, Oliver Ready, Sarah Young

     
  • Eugene Onegin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), often described as his masterpiece, which tells the tragic story of Onegin, Lensky and Tatyana.

    22 June 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Kahn, Emily Finer, Simon Dixon

     
  • Heart of Darkness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century

    15 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies

     
  • James Joyce's Ulysses

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's celebrated novel Ulysses.

    14 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Jeri Johnson, Richard Brown

     
  • Madame Bovary

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the literary sensation caused by the trial for indecency of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary.

    12 July 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andy Martin, Mary Orr, Robert Gildea

     
  • Middlemarch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's Study of Provincial Life, set before the Reform Act 1832 in a small, fictional town in the Midlands surrounded by farmland.

    18 April 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Kathryn Hughes, John Bowen

     
  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.

    5 May 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas

     
  • The Time Machine

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and anxieties in late Victorian London, explored by HG Wells in his story of time travel, evolution and a planet unfit for humans.

    17 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Amanda Rees, Simon James

     
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', the bestselling American novel of the 19th century which has slavery as its central theme.

    8 June 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Sarah Meer, Clive Webb

     
  • Philosophers of economics (9)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Ibn Khaldun

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.

    4 February 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • Nobel laureates in Literature (9)

  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Rabindranath Tagore

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature.

    7 May 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Chandrika Kaul, Bashabi Fraser, John Stevens

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • Philosophical schools and traditions (9)

  • Existentialism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses existentialism, a twentieth century philosophy of everyday life concerned with the individual, and his or her place within the world.

    28 June 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Christina Howells, Simon Critchley

     
  • Humanism

    Melvyn Bragg examines what happened to Humanism after its invention by Cicero in the first century BC. What does humanism actually mean and is it still a classical force in contemporary ideas?

    8 February 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tony Davies, Lisa Jardine, Simon Goldhill

     
  • Logical Positivism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.

    2 July 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel

     
  • Phenomenology

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.

    22 January 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall

     
  • Pragmatism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the American philosophy of pragmatism which purported that knowledge is only meaningful when coupled with action.

    17 November 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Miranda Fricker

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • Scepticism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of philosophical scepticism.

    5 July 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Melissa Lane, Jill Kraye

     
  • The Enlightenment in Britain

    Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.

    18 January 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black

     
  • The Scottish Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the emergence and impact of the Scottish Enlightenment which was led by the philosopher David Hume and the father of modern economics, Adam Smith.

    5 December 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tom Devine, Karen O'Brien, Alexander Broadie

     
  • Plays adapted into operas (8)

  • A Midsummer Night's Dream

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas behind Shakespeare's comedy with its intertwining plots of royal marriage, crossed lovers, quarreling fairies and rude mechanicals

    18 April 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Hackett, Tom Healy, Alison Findlay

     
  • Hamlet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.

    28 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai

     
  • Lear

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Shakespeare’s King Lear, a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless world.

    28 February 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Catherine Belsey

     
  • Macbeth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.

    1 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Smith, Kiernan Ryan, David Schalkwyk

     
  • Oedipus Rex

    Melvyn Bragg and guests on Sophocles' tragedy, sometimes called the best play ever written. With Edith Hall, Nick Lowe and Fiona Macintosh.

    08 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nick Lowe, Fiona Macintosh, Edith Hall

     
  • Romeo and Juliet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud

    17 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith

     
  • The Bacchae

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great tragedy by Euripides, where Dionysus takes revenge on Thebans who denied his divinity, their king torn to shreds by his mother.

    18 March 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Emily Wilson, Rosie Wyles

     
  • The Tempest

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tempest, one of Shakespeare's last and richest plays.

    14 November 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Erin Sullivan, Katherine Duncan-Jones

     
  • Last stands (8)

  • Carthage's Destruction

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the complete destruction of Carthage by Rome, a pivotal moment in world history.

    12 February 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Jo Quinn, Ellen O'Gorman

     
  • Constantinople Siege and Fall

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 1453 siege of Constantinople. A bitter and bloody 53 days that ended a thousand years of the Byzantine Empire.

    28 December 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roger Crowley, Judith Herrin, Colin Imber

     
  • Custer's Last Stand

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of the Little Bighorn, also known as Custer's Last Stand, the bloody 1876 battle between Native Americans and the US Cavalry.

    19 May 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Adam Smith, Saul David

     
  • The Battle of Bannockburn

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of Bannockburn of 1314, an important victory for Scotland in its fight to win independence from England.

    3 February 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Matthew Strickland, Fiona Watson, Michael Brown

     
  • The Battle of Stamford Bridge

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Battle of Stamford Bridge, a decisive English victory over Viking forces which took place in September 1066.

    2 June 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Hines, Elizabeth Ashman Rowe, Stephen Baxter

     
  • The Shimabara Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1637-8 Christian uprising in Japan, which led the Shogun to close the country to foreigners for the next 250 years.

    11 May 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Satona Suzuki, Erica Baffelli, Christopher Harding

     
  • The Siege of Tenochtitlan

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Siege of Tenochtitlan, the event which precipitated the fall of the Aztec Empire in 1521.

    27 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Alan Knight, Elizabeth Graham, Caroline Dodds Pennock

     
  • Thermopylae

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Battle of Thermopylae, a defining clash between East and West, when King Leonidas and his defeated Spartans passed into legend.

    5 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tom Holland, Simon Goldhill, Edith Hall

     
  • Pantheists (8)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Jung

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the mind and theories of the psychiatrist Carl Jung who wrote about the concepts of 'introverted' and 'extroverted', and the significance of the collective history of Mankind.

    2 December 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Brett Kahr, Ronald Hayman, Andrew Samuels

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Thomas Hardy's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.

    13 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Walt Whitman

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the innovative 19th-century poet, who broke away from European literary traditions to become a key figure in the development of American culture.

    27 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Peter Riley, Mark Ford

     
  • Members of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences (8)

  • Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.

    30 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans

     
  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • Linnaeus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering 18th century Swedish botanist, who devised a method of naming species and a new system for classifying plants and animals.

    20 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Staffan Müller-Wille, Stella Sandford, Steve Jones

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Pierre-Simon Laplace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication

    8 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal

     
  • Thomas Edison

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.

    9 December 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus

     
  • William and Caroline Herschel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.

    11 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett

     
  • Social theories (8)

  • Anarchism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anarchism and why its political ideas became synonymous with chaos and disorder.

    7 December 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Keane, Ruth Kinna, Peter Marshall

     
  • Existentialism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses existentialism, a twentieth century philosophy of everyday life concerned with the individual, and his or her place within the world.

    28 June 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Christina Howells, Simon Critchley

     
  • Feminism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the rise of Feminism and the subsequent empowerment of women. What have been the most lasting changes for women in the last century and what is there still left to achieve?

    7 January 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helena Cronin, Germaine Greer

     
  • Multiculturalism

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether it is possible to define how attitudes to race and identity have changed in the 20th century, given its vast shifts of population, cultures and peoples.

    13 May 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stuart Hall, Avtar Brah

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • Rawls's Theory of Justice

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, first published in 1971, a work that's been called the most influential book in 20th-century political philosophy.

    19 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fabienne Peter, Martin O'Neill, Jonathan Wolff

     
  • Social Darwinism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Social Darwinism, a school of thought which attempted to apply Darwin's ideas about evolution to human society.

    20 February 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Gregory Radick, Charlotte Sleigh

     
  • The Social Contract

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Social Contract. A key idea in political philosophy, it states that political authority is held through a contract with those to be ruled.

    7 February 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Susan James, Karen O'Brien

     
  • 19th-century essayists (8)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Peter Kropotkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest

    24 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • 19th-century German philosophers (8)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • German Lutherans (8)

  • Albrecht Dürer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dürer, the creator of some of the most memorable images in the late Renaissance from his woodcut of a rhinoceros to his stunning self portraits.

    12 November 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Foister, Giulia Bartrum, Ulinka Rublack

     
  • Bismarck

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the original Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, one of 19th Century Europe’s most influential statesmen and the founder of modern Germany.

    22 March 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard J Evans, Christopher Clark, Katharine Lerman

     
  • Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.

    30 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • Johannes Kepler

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.

    29 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Ulinka Rublack, Adam Mosley

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • William and Caroline Herschel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.

    11 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett

     
  • 18th-century philosophers (8)

  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Emilie du Châtelet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th-century mathematical genius whose insights into Newton and Leibniz were part of the great advance in science in the Enlightenment.

    4 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, David Wootton, Judith Zinsser

     
  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Moses Mendelssohn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Moses Mendelssohn, one of the greatest thinkers of the German Enlightenment.

    22 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christopher Clark, Abigail Green, Adam Sutcliffe

     
  • Olympe de Gouges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution

    21 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Philosophers of technology (8)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • Victorian novels (8)

  • A Christmas Carol

    From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.

    16 December 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch

     
  • Heart of Darkness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century

    15 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies

     
  • Jane Eyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

    18 June 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons

     
  • Middlemarch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's Study of Provincial Life, set before the Reform Act 1832 in a small, fictional town in the Midlands surrounded by farmland.

    18 April 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Kathryn Hughes, John Bowen

     
  • Silas Marner

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch and Valentine Cunningham discuss George Eliot's 1861 novel Silas Marner.

    28 January 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Dinah Birch, Valentine Cunningham

     
  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.

    5 May 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas

     
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.

    30 September 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen

     
  • Wuthering Heights

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.

    28 September 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis

     
  • Logicians (8)

  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Natural philosophers (8)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Heraclitus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.

    8 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren

     
  • Johannes Kepler

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.

    29 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Ulinka Rublack, Adam Mosley

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Robert Hooke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Robert Hooke, the 17th-century scientist with a wide variety of interests from elasticity to microscopes who fell out with Newton.

    18 February 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Patricia Fara, Rob Iliffe

     
  • Roger Bacon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.

    20 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt

     
  • British male essayists (8)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Edward Gibbon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.

    17 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Pope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.

    9 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Philosophers of sexuality (8)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • Concepts in aesthetics (8)

  • Authenticity

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what being oneself has meant to philosophers from Aristotle to Sartre and since and how compatible authenticity is with morality

    14 March 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Richmond, Denis McManus, Irene McMullin

     
  • Beauty

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the qualities of beauty and the history of aesthetics. Is beauty inherent in things, or in the mind of the observer?

    19 May 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Susan James, Julian Baggini

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • Taste

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th century obsession with good and bad taste

    25 October 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amanda Vickery, John Mullan, Jeremy Black

     
  • The Avant Garde's Decline and Fall in the 20th Century

    Melvyn Bragg examines the social and aesthetic impact of the Avant Garde and discusses whether it has failed in making painting relevant in the 20th century.

    25 February 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Eric Hobsbawm, Frances Morris

     
  • The Music of the Spheres

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the music of the spheres, the idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound beauty

    19 June 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Jim Bennett, Angela Voss

     
  • The Sublime

    Melvyn Bragg discusses a transcendental idea that 18th century British artists, poets, philosophers and scientists seized upon and adapted to the intellectual and physical landscape.

    12 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, Annie Janowitz, Peter de Bolla

     
  • Time

    Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?

    30 December 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin

     
  • Existentialists (8)

  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

    13 May 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson

     
  • Philosophers of psychology (8)

  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • English Anglicans (8)

  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Johnson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.

    27 October 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley

     
  • Robert Hooke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Robert Hooke, the 17th-century scientist with a wide variety of interests from elasticity to microscopes who fell out with Newton.

    18 February 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Patricia Fara, Rob Iliffe

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • The Death of Elizabeth I

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarch became King in the face of plots and plague.

    15 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Guy, Clare Jackson, Helen Hackett

     
  • Wilberforce

    In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.

    22 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • Concepts in epistemology (8)

  • Cogito Ergo Sum

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.

    28 April 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall

     
  • Common Sense Philosophy

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 18th century common sense philosophy which involves the most profound questions about human knowledge we are capable of asking.

    21 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Melissa Lane, Alexander Broadie

     
  • Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?

    25 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose

     
  • Ockham's Razor

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.

    31 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • The Brain and Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.

    19 November 1998

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson

     
  • Time

    Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?

    30 December 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin

     
  • Truth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.

    18 December 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright

     
  • Philosophers of mathematics (8)

  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Concepts in ethics (8)

  • Duty

    Melvyn Bragg discusses duty; the concept that others have a claim over our actions has been at the heart of the history of civilised society.

    13 November 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Annabel Brett, A. C. Grayling

     
  • Evil

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the notion of evil in western philosophy.

    3 May 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jones Erwin, Stephen Mulhall, Margaret Atkins

     
  • Free Will(500th programme)

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the problem of free will - the extent to which we are able to choose our actions.

    10 March 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Helen Beebee, Galen Strawson

     
  • Friendship

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the concept of friendship, considered in antiquity as being an essential constituent of both a good society and a good life.

    2 March 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Mark Vernon, John Mullan

     
  • Good and Evil

    Melvyn Bragg examines what the discoveries of Darwin and our knowledge of the true physiological nature and history of man has done for us in terms understanding our concepts of good and evil.

    1 April 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Leszek Kołakowski, Galen Strawson

     
  • Happiness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether 'happiness' means living a life of pleasure or of virtue. How much does this ancient philosophical debate still define what it means to be happy today?

    24 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Simon Blackburn, A. C. Grayling

     
  • The Unintended Consequences of Mathematics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the unintended consequences of mathematical discoveries, from alternating current to predicting the path of asteroids.

    11 February 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John D. Barrow, Colva Roney-Dougal, Marcus du Sautoy

     
  • Virtue

    Melvyn Bragg discusses a history of the concept of virtue from the ancient Greeks to modern ideas, and examines why we need it and what ideals of behaviour provide a universal framework for it.

    28 February 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Galen Strawson, Miranda Fricker, Roger Crisp

     
  • Main topic articles (8)

  • Education

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history education and examines whether its modern purpose is to teach us the nature of reality, or to give us the tools to deal with it.

    4 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Warnock, Ted Wragg

     
  • History and Understanding the Past

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether we can ever predict the future by understanding the past. What kind of lessons is it possible for leaders, governments or people to take from history?

    30 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard J. Evans, Eric Hobsbawm

     
  • Language and the Mind

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the formation of language is innate or cultural and examines how ideas about language are being radically challenged and altered in the 20th century.

    11 February 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Miller, Steven Pinker

     
  • Mathematics

    Melvyn Bragg examines the way perceptions of the importance of mathematics have fluctuated in the 20th century and what mathematics can reveal about how life began, and how it might continue.

    6 May 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Brian Butterworth

     
  • Mathematics and Platonism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether mathematics is a process of invention or of discovery. And if it is a discovery, how can we be sure that the mathematic we think we have discovered is the right one?

    11 January 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Margaret Wertheim, John D. Barrow

     
  • Maths and Storytelling

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the similar origins of mathematics and storytelling which both require a shape and structure to make any sense. But is it possible to apply mathematical logic to literature?

    30 September 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Allen Paulos, Marina Warner

     
  • Nature

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of man’s attempt to define nature, including the Ancient Greek’s quest to demonstrate the wrath of the gods and the Romantics who set out to philosophise it.

    10 July 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Roger Scruton, Karen Edwards

     
  • Time

    Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?

    30 December 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin

     
  • Catholic philosophers (7)

  • Elizabeth Anscombe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.

    22 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachael Wiseman, Constantine Sandis, Roger Teichmann

     
  • Erasmus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most significant figures of the Renaissance.

    9 February 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, Jill Kraye

     
  • Hildegard of Bingen

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.

    26 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum

     
  • Pascal

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.

    19 September 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi

     
  • Roger Bacon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.

    20 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • Fiction about suicide (7)

  • Hamlet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.

    28 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai

     
  • Jane Eyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

    18 June 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons

     
  • Lear

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Shakespeare’s King Lear, a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless world.

    28 February 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Catherine Belsey

     
  • Macbeth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.

    1 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Smith, Kiernan Ryan, David Schalkwyk

     
  • Oedipus Rex

    Melvyn Bragg and guests on Sophocles' tragedy, sometimes called the best play ever written. With Edith Hall, Nick Lowe and Fiona Macintosh.

    08 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nick Lowe, Fiona Macintosh, Edith Hall

     
  • Romeo and Juliet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud

    17 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith

     
  • Wuthering Heights

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.

    28 September 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis

     
  • French Roman Catholics (7)

  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Louis Pasteur

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.

    18 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys

     
  • Louis XIV: The Sun King

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and reign of the French king who built Versailles and took on the personal rule of his kingdom, becoming known as an absolute monarch.

    25 May 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Guy Rowlands, Penny Roberts

     
  • Marie Antoinette

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian princess who, while still a child, married the future Louis XVI of France only to face hostility and death under the French Revolution.

    8 November 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, David McCallam

     
  • Montesquieu

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.

    14 June 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore

     
  • Napoleon and Wellington

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the comparative histories of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, two titans of nineteenth century history.

    25 October 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Roberts, Mike Broers, Belinda Beaton

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • Hall of Fame for Great Americans inductees (7)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • President Ulysses S Grant

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Grant's role in rebuilding America in the decade after the Civil War and his impact on African-Americans and Native Americans.

    30 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Erik Mathisen, Susan-Mary Grant, Robert Cook

     
  • Thomas Edison

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.

    9 December 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Walt Whitman

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the innovative 19th-century poet, who broke away from European literary traditions to become a key figure in the development of American culture.

    27 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Peter Riley, Mark Ford

     
  • Washington and the American Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.

    24 June 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick

     
  • Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (7)

  • Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.

    30 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans

     
  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Louis Pasteur

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.

    18 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Paul Erdős

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the highly prolific, itinerant 20th century Hungarian mathematician, who enjoyed an unrivalled reputation for problem-solving.

    23 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Colva Roney-Dougal, Timothy Gowers, Andrew Treglown

     
  • Pierre-Simon Laplace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication

    8 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal

     
  • Literacy and society theorists (7)

  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Literary theorists (7)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.

    26 November 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Writers from London (7)

  • Chaucer

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Geoffrey Chaucer who immortalised the medieval pilgrimage and the diversity of 14th century English society, in his Canterbury Tales.

    9 February 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Helen Cooper, Ardis Butterfield

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Fanny Burney

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.

    23 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Johnson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.

    27 October 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Polidori's The Vampyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.

    07 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady

     
  • Works of unknown authorship (7)

  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poem of the knight who interrupts King Arthur's Christmas celebrations, challenging someone to chop off his head if he can do the same in return

    13 December 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Ad Putter, Simon Armitage

     
  • The Bhagavad Gita

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the contents and influence of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most revered texts of Hinduism.

    31 March 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Julius J. Lipner, Jessica Frazier

     
  • The Egyptian Book of the Dead

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss The Book of the Dead, an ancient Egyptian collection of spells intended to assist the journey of the deceased through the underworld.

    27 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Taylor, Kate Spence, Richard Parkinson

     
  • The Mabinogion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Welsh stories of Arthurian romance and Celtic mythology created in the oral tradition for centuries before being written down in the Middle Ages.

    10 May 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sioned Davies, Helen Fulton, Juliette Wood

     
  • The Nibelungenlied

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the epic German poem of Siegfried and Kriemhild against Gunther and Brunhilda, two powerful couples whose friendship turns to rivalry and revenge.

    1 December 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Bowden, Mark Chinca, Bettina Bildhauer

     
  • The Song of Roland

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the epic reimagining of the Battle of Roncevaux Pass in 778AD when Charlemagne's rearguard was ambushed and his knight Roland fought and died.

    4 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Miranda Griffin, Luke Sunderland

     
  • The Upanishads

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Upanishads, the sacred texts of Hinduism. Dating from about 700 BC, their mystical and philosophical nature still resonates today.

    8 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jessica Frazier, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Simon Brodbeck

     
  • Novels adapted into radio programs (7)

  • Animal Farm

    4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.

    29 September 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls

     
  • Frankenstein

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge

    16 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas

     
  • Great Gatsby

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.

    14 January 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek

     
  • Moby Dick

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, the story of Ahab and the white whale, the most popular of around 1,000 ideas that listeners submitted.

    7 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Bridget Bennett, Katie McGettigan, Graham Thompson

     
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you

    15 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen

     
  • Robinson Crusoe

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success and is considered the classic adventure story.

    22 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley, Bob Owens

     
  • Tristram Shandy

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.

    24 April 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Hawley, John Mullan, Mary Newbould

     
  • 18th-century essayists (7)

  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Pope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.

    9 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold

     
  • 19th-century atheists (7)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • Lenin

    Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.

    16 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Peter Kropotkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest

    24 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • 19th-century philosophers (7)

  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Peter Kropotkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest

    24 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon

     
  • Rosa Luxemburg

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.

    13 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • 20th-century essayists (7)

  • Fernando Pessoa

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works and life of one of Portugal's greatest poets, who wrote in his own name and in those of several rounded characters he created.

    3 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Cláudia Pazos-Alonso, Juliet Perkins, Paulo de Medeiros

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Peter Kropotkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest

    24 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon

     
  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • English Renaissance plays (7)

  • A Midsummer Night's Dream

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas behind Shakespeare's comedy with its intertwining plots of royal marriage, crossed lovers, quarreling fairies and rude mechanicals

    18 April 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Hackett, Tom Healy, Alison Findlay

     
  • Elizabethan Revenge

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why revenge tragedy was so popular with Elizabethan theatre goers, from Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy to Shakespeare's Hamlet.

    18 June 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Julie Sanders, Janet Clare

     
  • Hamlet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.

    28 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai

     
  • Lear

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Shakespeare’s King Lear, a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless world.

    28 February 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Catherine Belsey

     
  • Macbeth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.

    1 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Smith, Kiernan Ryan, David Schalkwyk

     
  • Romeo and Juliet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud

    17 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith

     
  • The Tempest

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tempest, one of Shakespeare's last and richest plays.

    14 November 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Erin Sullivan, Katherine Duncan-Jones

     
  • Victorian novelists (7)

  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.

    9 March 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow

     
  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Thomas Hardy's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.

    13 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • Philosophers of love (7)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Socrates

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.

    27 September 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett

     
  • The Buddha

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.

    14 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Honorary members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (7)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.

    30 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans

     
  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • Louis Pasteur

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.

    18 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • William and Caroline Herschel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.

    11 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett

     
  • Christian radicals (7)

  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.

    27 September 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs

     
  • George Fox and the Quakers

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.

    5 April 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters

     
  • John Wesley and Methodism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world

    10 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Wilberforce

    In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.

    22 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • Wyclif and the Lollards

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval philosopher and theologian John Wyclif and his followers, the Lollards.

    16 June 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Anne Hudson, Rob Lutton

     
  • English male dramatists and playwrights (7)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Marlowe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Christopher Marlowe; a forger, a brawler, a spy, but above all a playwright, a poet and the most celebrated writer of his generation.

    7 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate, Emma J. Smith

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Shakespeare and Literary Criticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.

    4 March 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose

     
  • Shakespeare's Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.

    15 March 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo

     
  • Shakespeare's Work

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.

    11 May 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer

     
  • Evolutionary biology (7)

  • Chance and Design

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the questions and theories surrounding the idea of a grand design in the universe. Can the concept of the randomness of evolution be compatible with a belief in God?

    13 February 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Conway Morris, Sandy Knapp, John Brooke

     
  • Evolution

    Melvyn Bragg examines the future of gene therapy and advances in evolutionary biology. Could electronic devices discover the means of self-replication, and what would be the consequences?

    15 April 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Maynard Smith, Colin Tudge

     
  • Evolutionary Psychology

    Melvyn Bragg explores the basis for the idea of Evolutionary Psychology and the context for its development as a discipline. What can it tell us about how we behave, and can it be trusted?

    2 November 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Radcliffe Richards, Nicholas Humphrey, Steven Rose

     
  • Genetic Mutation

    Melvyn Bragg discusses mutation in genetics and evolution, unlocking the secrets of life and death.

    6 December 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, Adrian Woolfson, Linda Partridge

     
  • Hybrids

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how some genetically different parents - from different species - can have offspring and what that says about the origin and evolution of species

    31 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sandra Knapp, Nicola Nadeau, Steve Jones

     
  • The Evolution of Teeth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about the origins of teeth, their link to hard scales on fish such as sharks and why some species regenerate theirs but humans do not.

    11 April 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Gareth Fraser, Zerina Johanson, Philip Donoghue

     
  • The Origins of Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how the world’s first organic matter originated, nearly four billion years ago. What is the single common ancestor from which all living matter on our planet derives?

    23 September 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Dawkins, Richard Corfield, Linda Partridge

     
  • 20th-century French philosophers (7)

  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • People of the Elizabethan era (7)

  • Marlowe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Christopher Marlowe; a forger, a brawler, a spy, but above all a playwright, a poet and the most celebrated writer of his generation.

    7 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate, Emma J. Smith

     
  • Mary, Queen of Scots

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who might have united the French, English and Scottish thrones.

    19 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Forsyth, Anna Groundwater, John Guy

     
  • Shakespeare and Literary Criticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.

    4 March 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose

     
  • Shakespeare's Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.

    15 March 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo

     
  • Shakespeare's Work

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.

    11 May 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer

     
  • The Death of Elizabeth I

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarch became King in the face of plots and plague.

    15 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Guy, Clare Jackson, Helen Hackett

     
  • William Cecil

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and influence of the 1st Baron Burghley, Elizabeth I's powerful Secretary of State who advanced England's interests throughout her reign

    7 March 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Susan Doran, John Guy

     
  • Empiricists (7)

  • Abelard and Heloise

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.

    5 May 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Bishop Berkeley

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.

    20 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Roger Bacon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.

    20 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt

     
  • Critics of work and the work ethic (7)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • John Ruskin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.

    31 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • Islamic philosophers (7)

  • Al-Biruni

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Central Asian polymath al-Biruni and his 11th-century book India, one of the first scholarly works about the country.

    10 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: James Montgomery, Hugh Kennedy, Amira Bennison

     
  • Al-Ghazali

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, one of the most significant and influential philosophers of the Middle Ages.

    19 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Gleave

     
  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • Ibn Khaldun

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.

    4 February 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy

     
  • Rumi's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Rumi, the Persian scholar and Sufi mystic of the 13th century, whose great poetic works are the Masnavi and the Divan.

    11 February 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Alan Williams, Carole Hillenbrand, Lloyd Ridgeon

     
  • Physical cosmology (7)

  • Dark Energy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the recently discovered, and mysteriously named, 'dark energy' which may make up 70% of the universe.

    17 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Roger Penrose

     
  • Dark matter

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that is believed to make up most of the universe.

    12 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Gresham Professor of Astronomy Carlos Frenk, Anne Green

     
  • Grand unified theory

    Melvyn Bragg examines 20th century’s physics’ search for one theory that can explain the behaviour of the smallest particle as well as the movements of the largest planets in the Universe.

    24 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Brian Greene, Martin Rees

     
  • The Age of the Universe

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss a question which has obsessed cosmologists for millennia: how old is the Universe?

    3 March 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Carlos Frenk

     
  • The Multiverse

    Melvyn Bragg and guests will be leaving the studio, the planet and indeed, the universe to take a tour of the Multiverse

    21 February 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Fay Dowker, Bernard Carr

     
  • The Universe's Origins

    Melvyn Bragg examines the way thinking about the origins of the universe changed in the 20th century. Are we any closer to knowing whether other worlds exist and how our planet came into being?

    20 May 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Paul Davies

     
  • The Universe's Shape

    Melvyn Bragg discusses shape, size and topology of the universe and examines theories about its expansion. If it is already infinite, how can it be getting any bigger? And is there really only one?

    7 February 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Julian Barbour, Janna Levin

     
  • Ontology (7)

  • Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?

    25 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose

     
  • Materialism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Materialism– the philosophical idea that matter constitutes all that exists.

    24 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Caroline Warman, Anthony O'Hear

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • The Brain and Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.

    19 November 1998

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson

     
  • The Ontological Argument

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Ontological Argument, the philosophical attempt to prove the existence of God through reason alone.

    27 September 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Haldane, Peter Millican, Clare Carlisle

     
  • Time

    Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?

    30 December 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin

     
  • Truth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.

    18 December 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright

     
  • Virtue (7)

  • Altruism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss altruism, described as “an unselfish attention to the needs of others” but how does this square with Darwin’s theory of Evolution?

    23 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miranda Fricker, Richard Dawkins, John Dupré

     
  • Duty

    Melvyn Bragg discusses duty; the concept that others have a claim over our actions has been at the heart of the history of civilised society.

    13 November 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Annabel Brett, A. C. Grayling

     
  • Politeness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses politeness, the revolution in manners that transformed the social scene in eighteenth century Britain.  

    30 September 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amanda Vickery, David Wootton, John Mullan

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • The Enlightenment in Britain

    Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.

    18 January 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black

     
  • Truth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.

    18 December 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright

     
  • Virtue

    Melvyn Bragg discusses a history of the concept of virtue from the ancient Greeks to modern ideas, and examines why we need it and what ideals of behaviour provide a universal framework for it.

    28 February 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Galen Strawson, Miranda Fricker, Roger Crisp

     
  • 17th-century English male writers (7)

  • George Fox and the Quakers

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.

    5 April 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Robert Boyle

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.

    12 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos

     
  • Shakespeare and Literary Criticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.

    4 March 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose

     
  • Shakespeare's Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.

    15 March 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo

     
  • Shakespeare's Work

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.

    11 May 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer

     
  • Aristotelian philosophers (7)

  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Averroes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Averroes who worked to reconcile the theology of Islam with the rationality of Aristotle, achieving both fame and infamy.

    5 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Peter Adamson, Anthony Kenny

     
  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Maimonides

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work and influence of Maimonides. Widely regarded as the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period.

    17 February 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Joseph Haldane, Sarah Stroumsa, Peter Adamson

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • Formal sciences (7)

  • Artificial Intelligence

    Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.

    8 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander

     
  • Artificial Intelligence

    Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.

    8 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander

     
  • Cryptography

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of codes including the Caesar cipher, the ‘uncrackable’ Vigenere code, the Enigma machine and the cryptography that underwrites the information age.

    29 January 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Singh, Fred Piper, Lisa Jardine

     
  • Game Theory

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss game theory, the mathematical study of decision-making.

    10 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Andrew Colman, Richard Bradley

     
  • Mathematics

    Melvyn Bragg examines the way perceptions of the importance of mathematics have fluctuated in the 20th century and what mathematics can reveal about how life began, and how it might continue.

    6 May 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Brian Butterworth

     
  • Mathematics and Platonism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether mathematics is a process of invention or of discovery. And if it is a discovery, how can we be sure that the mathematic we think we have discovered is the right one?

    11 January 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Margaret Wertheim, John D. Barrow

     
  • Maths and Storytelling

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the similar origins of mathematics and storytelling which both require a shape and structure to make any sense. But is it possible to apply mathematical logic to literature?

    30 September 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Allen Paulos, Marina Warner

     
  • Philosophy of science (7)

  • Empiricism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the development of the idea formulated by John Locke that all knowledge arises from experience, and looks at its effect on the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.

    10 June 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Hawley, Murray Pittock, Jonathan Rée

     
  • Genetic Determinism

    Melvyn Bragg explores the part genes play in our personalities and examines how this affects our free will. Do genetic explanations for behaviour make a nonsense of free will, and therefore morality?

    23 September 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, Matt Ridley

     
  • Laws of Nature

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the quest to find a single over-arching equation that unites all of physics and examines whether what is true in physics is true in all areas of existence.

    19 October 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Buchanan, Frank Close, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Logical Positivism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.

    2 July 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel

     
  • Pragmatism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the American philosophy of pragmatism which purported that knowledge is only meaningful when coupled with action.

    17 November 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Miranda Fricker

     
  • Science and Religion

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the relationship and the areas of conflict between science and religion, and examines why mankind seeks to find all encompassing answers in these two realms.

    25 January 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Jay Gould, John Haldane, Hilary Rose

     
  • The Scientific method

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific discovery.

    26 January 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, John Worrall, Michela Massimi

     
  • Literary genres (7)

  • Epistolary Literature

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 18th Century fashion for epistolary literature including Aphra Benn, Samuel Richardson and Jane Austen.

    15 March 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Karen O'Brien, Brean Hammond

     
  • Gothic

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss what inspired the 18th century anti-enlightenment Gothic movement, and examines how it has managed to secure itself a permanent position in popular culture even today.

    4 January 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Chris Baldick, A. N. Wilson, Emma Clery

     
  • Pastoral Literature

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss pastoral literature which looks at tensions between nature and art, the real and the ideal, the actual and the mythical.

    6 July 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Cooper, Laurence Lerner, Julie Sanders

     
  • Roman Satire

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Mary Beard, Denis Feeney and Duncan Kennedy discuss Roman satire.

    22 April 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Denis Feeney, Duncan Kennedy

     
  • Sensation

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the novels of sensation, a literary phenomenon which swept through the Victorian era.

    6 November 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Lyn Pykett, Dinah Birch

     
  • The Romantics

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the ideals and legacy of Romanticism, a literary and artistic movement at the turn of the 19th century which gave rise to the great poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.

    12 October 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Rosemary Ashton, Nicholas Roe

     
  • Tragedy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the ancient genre of tragedy and examines whether we have a psychological need for it, either as catharsis or Schadenfreude.

    2 December 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: George Steiner, Catherine Belsey

     
  • Astronomical objects known since antiquity (6)

  • Jupiter

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the largest planet in our solar system.

    29 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Michele Dougherty, Leigh Fletcher, Carolin Crawford

     
  • Mars

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the planet Mars. Named after the Roman god of war, Mars has been a source of continual fascination.

    11 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Zarnecki, Colin Pillinger, Monica Grady

     
  • Saturn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Saturn, the most distant planet easily visible to the human eye, with over 60 moons and, with its rings, one of the most striking sights in space.

    14 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Michele Dougherty, Andrew Coates

     
  • The Moon

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the origins, science and mythology of the moon. Man may have landed on the moon, but our 'twin planet' in many ways still remains a mystery.

    3 November 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Murdin, Carolin Crawford, Ian Crawford

     
  • The Sun

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the science of the sun, source of all our energy.

    10 July 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Yvonne Elsworth, Louise Harra

     
  • Venus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Earth's neighbouring planet, once thought very similar but now known to be extremely volcanic with a surface temperature of 450C.

    27 December 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Colin Wilson, Andrew Coates

     
  • Members of the French Academy of Sciences (6)

  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • Lamarck and Natural Selection

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, the 18th century French scientist, and his theory of Natural Selection. Who was he and how far did he pave the way for Darwin?

    26 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sandy Knapp, Steve Jones, Simon Conway Morris

     
  • Linnaeus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering 18th century Swedish botanist, who devised a method of naming species and a new system for classifying plants and animals.

    20 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Staffan Müller-Wille, Stella Sandford, Steve Jones

     
  • Louis Pasteur

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.

    18 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Pierre-Simon Laplace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication

    8 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal

     
  • English women poets (6)

  • Ada Lovelace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century mathematician and hard living daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.

    6 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi

     
  • Aphra Behn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.

    12 October 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch

     
  • Christina Rossetti

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.

    1 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton

     
  • Fanny Burney

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.

    23 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan

     
  • Stevie Smith

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the writer best known for her poem Not Waving But Drowning, whose success has arguably overshadowed her wider work as a poet and novelist.

    16 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jeremy Noel-Tod, Noreen Masud, Will May

     
  • The Death of Elizabeth I

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarch became King in the face of plots and plague.

    15 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Guy, Clare Jackson, Helen Hackett

     
  • 17th-century English poets (6)

  • Aphra Behn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.

    12 October 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Shakespeare and Literary Criticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.

    4 March 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose

     
  • Shakespeare's Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.

    15 March 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo

     
  • Shakespeare's Work

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.

    11 May 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer

     
  • Lutheran saints (6)

  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.

    27 September 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs

     
  • Jan Amos Komenský

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Czech man who tried to use education to build a better understanding between the peoples of Europe who were otherwise divided by religious wars.

    19 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Vladimir Urbanek, Suzanna Ivanic, Howard Hotson

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • John Wesley and Methodism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world

    10 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • The Venerable Bede

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.

    25 November 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown

     
  • People celebrated in the Lutheran liturgical calendar (6)

  • Albrecht Dürer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dürer, the creator of some of the most memorable images in the late Renaissance from his woodcut of a rhinoceros to his stunning self portraits.

    12 November 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Foister, Giulia Bartrum, Ulinka Rublack

     
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.

    27 September 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • John Wesley and Methodism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world

    10 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Mary Magdalene

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Magdalene, one of the best-known figures in the Bible.

    25 February 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Joanne Anderson, Eamon Duffy, Joan Taylor

     
  • Love stories (6)

  • Great Gatsby

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.

    14 January 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek

     
  • Jane Eyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

    18 June 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons

     
  • Persuasion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's final completed novel: the story of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, their broken engagement and their chance meeting 8 years later.

    22 December 2022

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    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Fiona Stafford, Paddy Bullard

     
  • Romeo and Juliet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud

    17 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith

     
  • Tristan and Iseult

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tristan and Iseult, as told by Thomas of Britain and Beroul in the 12th century and reworked by Gottfried of Strasbourg and others, including Wagner.

    31 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Juliette Wood, Mark Chinca

     
  • Wuthering Heights

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.

    28 September 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis

     
  • Wars involving France (6)

  • Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, thought he was victorious yet had to retreat, losing most of his army and, soon after, his empire.

    19 September 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Hartley, Michael Rowe, Michael Rapport

     
  • The Boxer Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Boxer Rebellion, when the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists purged China of foreign influences in the summer of 1900.

    19 March 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Rana Mitter, R. G. Tiedemann

     
  • The Irish Rebellion of 1798

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the uprising in 1798 led by the United Irishmen, who were inspired by American and French revolutions, and the impact this had across Ireland.

    8 December 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian McBride, Catriona Kennedy, Liam Chambers

     
  • The Taiping Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Taiping Rebellion, a Chinese civil war which claimed around 20 million lives in the 19th century.

    24 February 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rana Mitter, Frances Wood, Julia Lovell

     
  • The Thirty Years War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss a topic suggested by listeners: the war which was centred on the Holy Roman Empire from 1618 and was unequalled in scale until C20th

    6 December 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Wilson, Ulinka Rublack, Toby Osborne

     
  • Third Crusade

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Third Crusade, from death of the Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, to the famous encounter between Richard I and Saladin.

    29 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Riley-Smith, Carole Hillenbrand, Tariq Ali

     
  • Art movements (6)

  • Bauhaus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the short-lived German combined art and crafts school founded by Walter Gropius in 1919 which became highly influential around the world.

    10 November 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robin Schuldenfrei, Alan Powers, Michael White

     
  • Modernist Utopias

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the mad, bad world of modern utopias where babies are hatched from test tubes, where women live without men, where machines have taken over, and where the poor are exterminated.

    10 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Steven Connor, Laura Marcus

     
  • Surrealism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses surrealism, the art of the unconscious, repression, desire and sex.

    15 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dawn Adiss, Malcolm Bowie, Darian Leader

     
  • The Baroque Movement

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the culture of the Baroque, from Bach and Caavaggio to the Colonnades of St Peter’s.

    20 November 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: T. C. W. Blanning, Nigel Aston, Helen Hills

     
  • The Decadent Movement

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influence of Baudelaire and Walter Pater on writers and artists in Britain in the 1890s, pursuing art for its own sake and not with moral aims.

    18 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Neil Sammells, Kate Hext, Alex Murray

     
  • The Romantics

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the ideals and legacy of Romanticism, a literary and artistic movement at the turn of the 19th century which gave rise to the great poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.

    12 October 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Rosemary Ashton, Nicholas Roe

     
  • Modernist writers (6)

  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Dylan Thomas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works and ideas of this celebrated Welsh poet, from his teenage success to his tours of America via Under Milk Wood.

    16 June 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nerys Williams, John Goodby, Leo Mellor

     
  • Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.

    26 November 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson

     
  • Kafka's The Trial

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.

    27 November 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • French political philosophers (6)

  • Montesquieu

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.

    14 June 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore

     
  • Olympe de Gouges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution

    21 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • French women philosophers (6)

  • Christine de Pizan

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Christine de Pizan (c1364-1430) who, according to Simone de Beauvoir, was the first woman to 'take up her pen in defence of her sex'.

    8 June 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Swift, Miranda Griffin, Marilynn Desmond

     
  • Emilie du Châtelet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th-century mathematical genius whose insights into Newton and Leibniz were part of the great advance in science in the Enlightenment.

    4 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, David Wootton, Judith Zinsser

     
  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Olympe de Gouges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution

    21 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • Anti-consumerists (6)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • John Ruskin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.

    31 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Peter Kropotkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest

    24 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • British plays adapted into films (6)

  • A Midsummer Night's Dream

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas behind Shakespeare's comedy with its intertwining plots of royal marriage, crossed lovers, quarreling fairies and rude mechanicals

    18 April 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Hackett, Tom Healy, Alison Findlay

     
  • Hamlet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.

    28 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai

     
  • Lear

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Shakespeare’s King Lear, a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless world.

    28 February 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Catherine Belsey

     
  • Macbeth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.

    1 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Smith, Kiernan Ryan, David Schalkwyk

     
  • Romeo and Juliet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud

    17 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith

     
  • The Tempest

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tempest, one of Shakespeare's last and richest plays.

    14 November 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Erin Sullivan, Katherine Duncan-Jones

     
  • 19th-century English poets (6)

  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works of Hopkins, unpublished in his lifetime, who FR Leavis called 'the only influential poet of the Victorian age and the greatest'.

    21 March 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catherine Phillips, Jane Wright, Martin Dubois

     
  • John Clare

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Clare, the 'Northamptonshire peasant poet', whose writing was as celebrated as his life was humble.

    9 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Mina Gorji, Simon Kövesi

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Thomas Hardy's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.

    13 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • English short story writers (6)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.

    9 March 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • Thomas Hardy's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.

    13 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • Victorian poets (6)

  • Christina Rossetti

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.

    1 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton

     
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works of Hopkins, unpublished in his lifetime, who FR Leavis called 'the only influential poet of the Victorian age and the greatest'.

    21 March 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catherine Phillips, Jane Wright, Martin Dubois

     
  • John Clare

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Clare, the 'Northamptonshire peasant poet', whose writing was as celebrated as his life was humble.

    9 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Mina Gorji, Simon Kövesi

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Thomas Hardy's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.

    13 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • English non-fiction writers (6)

  • Annie Besant

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.

    21 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan

     
  • Booth's Life and Labour Survey

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's ambitious project to discover how many people in late Victorian London were living in poverty, and understand why

    10 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Griffin, Sarah Wise, Lawrence Goldman

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Octavia Hill

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.

    7 April 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley

     
  • Sir Thomas Browne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and language of Browne (1605-82), a doctor sharing his personal views on science, history and religion at a time of great change

    6 June 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Claire Preston, Jessica Wolfe, Kevin Killeen

     
  • German ethicists (6)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Poems adapted into films (6)

  • Beowulf

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the epic poem Beowulf, one of the masterpieces of Anglo-Saxon literature.

    5 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Clare Lees, Andy Orchard

     
  • Epic of Gilgamesh

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Gilgamesh Epic, often described as the earliest surviving great work of literature, with origins in Mesopotamia in the 3rd millennium BC.

    3 November 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew George, Frances Reynolds, Martin Worthington

     
  • Shahnameh of Ferdowsi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the epic poem the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi, the 'Book of Kings', which has been at the heart of Persian culture for the past thousand years.

    13 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Narguess Farzad, Charles Melville, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis

     
  • The Iliad

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the story of a crucial 40 days in the 10-year battle for Troy, framed by Achilles' anger first at his leader Agamenmon and then at his enemy Hector.

    13 September 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Barbara Graziosi, Paul Cartledge

     
  • The Odyssey

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Homer’s Odyssey, the epic story of the Greek hero Odysseus’ journey back from Troy, and its foundational position in the history of western literature and ideas.

    9 September 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Edith Hall, Oliver Taplin

     
  • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Coleridge's poem of a grim voyage in which a sailor shoots an albatross and is forced to tell the story of his crime forever.

    4 March 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sir Jonathan Bate, Tom Mole, Rosemary Ashton

     
  • Founders of religions (6)

  • Akhenaten

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Elizabeth Frood, Richard Parkinson and Kate Spence discuss Akhenaten, the ruler who brought revolutionary change to ancient Egypt.

    1 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Parkinson, Elizabeth Frood, Kate Spence

     
  • Confucius

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.

    1 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu

     
  • George Fox and the Quakers

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.

    5 April 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters

     
  • John Wesley and Methodism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world

    10 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson

     
  • Pythagoras

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.

    10 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor

     
  • The Buddha

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.

    14 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle

     
  • 17th-century English writers (6)

  • Aphra Behn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.

    12 October 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch

     
  • George Fox and the Quakers

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.

    5 April 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Mary Astell

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".

    5 November 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Robert Boyle

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.

    12 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos

     
  • English agnostics (6)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Paul Dirac

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.

    5 March 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman

     
  • Rosalind Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the achievements of the pioneering scientist Rosalind Franklin.

    22 February 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Jim Naismith, Judith Howard

     
  • Royal Medal winners (6)

  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.

    21 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton

     
  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Dorothy Hodgkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.

    3 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara

     
  • John Dalton

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss scientist John Dalton, who pioneered the development of atomic theory and carried out research into meteorology and colour blindness.

    27 October 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Bennett, Aileen Fyfe, James Sumner

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Paul Dirac

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.

    5 March 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman

     
  • Modernist theatre (6)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Chekhov

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov.

    14 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Kelly, Cynthia Marsh, Rosamund Bartlett

     
  • Federico Garcia Lorca

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, executed by Franco's forces, his body unrecovered.

    4 July 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Maria Delgado, Federico Bonaddio, Sarah Wright

     
  • Henrik Ibsen

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great Norwegian playwright whose middle-class tragedies include A Doll's House, The Wild Duck, Hedda Gabler and An Enemy of the People.

    31 May 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tore Rem, Kirsten Shepherd-Barr, Dinah Birch

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • Simple living advocates (6)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Horace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace, one of the greatest poets of his age, the origin of phrases such as carpe diem, nil desperandum and dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

    15 November 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emily Gowers, William Fitzgerald, Ellen O'Gorman

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Rumi's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Rumi, the Persian scholar and Sufi mystic of the 13th century, whose great poetic works are the Masnavi and the Divan.

    11 February 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Alan Williams, Carole Hillenbrand, Lloyd Ridgeon

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Emotions (6)

  • Guilt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the moral conscience and take a long hard look at the idea of guilt.

    1 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Miranda Fricker, Oliver Davies

     
  • Happiness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether 'happiness' means living a life of pleasure or of virtue. How much does this ancient philosophical debate still define what it means to be happy today?

    24 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Simon Blackburn, A. C. Grayling

     
  • Hope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the development of ideas about hope, left in Pandora's box either as a consolation or as another evil, later the companion of faith and love

    22 November 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Robert Stern, Judith Wolfe

     
  • Hysteria

    Melvyn Bragg discusses a problematic notion which can be an emotional condition, a syndrome, an over-reaction, or the physical signs of trauma, which became the bedrock for psychoanalysis.

    22 April 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliet Mitchell, Rachel Bowlby, Brett Kahr

     
  • The Philosophy of Solitude

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosophy of solitude, from religious hermits to those exiled from their homeland.

    19 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Simon Blackburn, John Haldane

     
  • Victorian Pessimism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Victorian Pessimism, from Matthew Arnold’s poem Dover Beach to the malign universe of Thomas Hardy’s novels.

    10 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rosemary Ashton, Peter Mandler

     
  • People whose existence is disputed (6)

  • Aesop

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aesop, legendary author of the famous collection of fables.

    20 November 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Pavlos Avlamis, Lucy Grig, Simon Goldhill

     
  • King Solomon

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Solomon, the biblical king celebrated in the Old Testament for his wisdom.

    7 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, Philip Alexander, Katharine Dell

     
  • Merlin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Merlin, prophet, magician, king maker and the original mad man of the woods, distraught at the death of his lord in battle.

    30 June 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliette Wood, Stephen Knight, Peter Forshaw

     
  • Robin Hood

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the centuries old myth of the most romantic noble outlaw. Was he a yeoman, an aristocrat, an anarchist or the figment of a collective imagination?

    30 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Knight, Thomas Hahn, Juliette Wood

     
  • Romulus and Remus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Mary Beard, Peter Wiseman and Tim Cornell discuss Romulus and Remus, the foundation myth of Rome.

    24 January 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Peter Wiseman, Tim Cornell

     
  • Sun Tzu and The Art of War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.

    1 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos

     
  • 19th-century English women writers (6)

  • Ada Lovelace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century mathematician and hard living daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.

    6 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi

     
  • Annie Besant

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.

    21 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan

     
  • Christina Rossetti

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.

    1 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton

     
  • Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.

    9 March 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow

     
  • Fanny Burney

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.

    23 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan

     
  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • 1st-century Romans (6)

  • Josephus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Flavius Josephus, author of The Jewish War.

    21 May 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tessa Rajak, Philip Alexander, Martin Goodman

     
  • Pliny the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Roman lawyer and statesman Pliny the Younger, whose letters offer a fascinating insight into his life and the ancient world.

    12 December 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Roy Gibson, Alice König

     
  • Pliny's Natural History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pliny the Elder's Natural History, a comprehensive and influential encyclopedia of the natural sciences written in the first century AD.

    8 July 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Serafina Cuomo, Aude Doody, Liba Taub

     
  • Ptolemy and Ancient Astronomy

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the last of the great Greek astronomers of antiquity, Ptolemy, and his influence on ancient and medieval astronomy.

    17 November 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Liba Taub, Jim Bennett, Charles Burnett

     
  • Seneca the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.

    23 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro

     
  • The Augustan Age

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.

    11 June 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy

     
  • Male essayists (6)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • John Ruskin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.

    31 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini

     
  • Johnson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.

    27 October 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Seneca the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.

    23 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro

     
  • French atheists (6)

  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • The Curies

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.

    26 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell

     
  • Social philosophy (6)

  • Altruism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss altruism, described as “an unselfish attention to the needs of others” but how does this square with Darwin’s theory of Evolution?

    23 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miranda Fricker, Richard Dawkins, John Dupré

     
  • Capitalism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of capitalism and examines whether we have witnessed its triumph or if we are only now learning the full costs and the social impact of its unfettered advance.

    24 June 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anatole Kaletsky, Edward Luttwak

     
  • Evil

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the notion of evil in western philosophy.

    3 May 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jones Erwin, Stephen Mulhall, Margaret Atkins

     
  • The Frankfurt School

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Frankfurt School, a group of influential German thinkers who argued that culture keeps people passive.

    14 January 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Esther Leslie, Raymond Geuss

     
  • The Philosophy of Love

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of love, a search for a completeness in human nature.

    29 March 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roger Scruton, Angie Hobbs, Thomas Docherty

     
  • Utilitarianism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss utilitarianism, a moral theory that assesses acts by their tendency to increase pleasure in the world and decrease the amount of pain.

    11 June 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Brad Hooker

     
  • Concepts in the philosophy of mind (6)

  • Cogito Ergo Sum

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss one of the most famous statements in philosophy, 'Cogito ergo sum', Rene Descartes' attempt to establish what we can truly know.

    28 April 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan James, John Cottingham, Stephen Mulhall

     
  • Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?

    25 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose

     
  • Perception and the Senses

    Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.

    28 April 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert

     
  • The Brain and Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.

    19 November 1998

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson

     
  • The Soul

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the spectrum of ideas about the soul, the extent of human individuality, and the history of thought concerning immortality and the afterlife.

    6 June 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Sorabji, Ruth Padel, Martin Palmer

     
  • Time

    Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?

    30 December 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin

     
  • Concepts in metaphysics (6)

  • Evil

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the notion of evil in western philosophy.

    3 May 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jones Erwin, Stephen Mulhall, Margaret Atkins

     
  • Free Will(500th programme)

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the problem of free will - the extent to which we are able to choose our actions.

    10 March 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Helen Beebee, Galen Strawson

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • The Music of the Spheres

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the music of the spheres, the idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound beauty

    19 June 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Jim Bennett, Angela Voss

     
  • The Soul

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the spectrum of ideas about the soul, the extent of human individuality, and the history of thought concerning immortality and the afterlife.

    6 June 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Sorabji, Ruth Padel, Martin Palmer

     
  • Time

    Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?

    30 December 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin

     
  • Philosophy of life (6)

  • Existentialism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses existentialism, a twentieth century philosophy of everyday life concerned with the individual, and his or her place within the world.

    28 June 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Christina Howells, Simon Critchley

     
  • Free Will(500th programme)

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the problem of free will - the extent to which we are able to choose our actions.

    10 March 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Helen Beebee, Galen Strawson

     
  • Guilt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the moral conscience and take a long hard look at the idea of guilt.

    1 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Miranda Fricker, Oliver Davies

     
  • Humanism

    Melvyn Bragg examines what happened to Humanism after its invention by Cicero in the first century BC. What does humanism actually mean and is it still a classical force in contemporary ideas?

    8 February 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tony Davies, Lisa Jardine, Simon Goldhill

     
  • Nihilism

    Melvyn Bragg explores the history of Nihilism, a philosophy associated with Nietzsche that claims truth and morality are illusory. Has anything positive come out of the philosophy of ‘nothing’?

    16 November 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rob Hopkins, Raymond Tallis, Catherine Belsey

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • Mental processes (6)

  • Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?

    25 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose

     
  • Imagination

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the creatives forces of the imagination, that companion of artists, scientists, leaders and visionaries.

    28 November 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Stuart, Steven Mithen, Semir Zeki

     
  • Imagination and Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg investigates how neuroscience can help to explain the enigmas of consciousness and how we are able to imagine things when they are not there; ideas that have long troubled philosophers.

    29 June 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Gerald Edelman, Igor Aleksander, Margaret Boden

     
  • Memory

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the significance of memory. Is it a repository of events waiting to be plucked to consciousness?

    29 May 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Conway, Mike Kopelman, Kim Graham

     
  • Memory and Culture

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how our ways of remembering have changed and explores whether memory itself can remain forever unchanged in its role within our psychology.

    27 May 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Malcolm Bowie, Nancy Wood

     
  • The Brain and Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.

    19 November 1998

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson

     
  • English male novelists, English male short story writers (6)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • Thomas Hardy's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.

    13 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • Analytic philosophers (5)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Elizabeth Anscombe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.

    22 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachael Wiseman, Constantine Sandis, Roger Teichmann

     
  • Iris Murdoch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

    21 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson

     
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

    13 May 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Christian ethicists (5)

  • Abelard and Heloise

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.

    5 May 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy

     
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.

    27 September 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs

     
  • Elizabeth Anscombe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.

    22 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachael Wiseman, Constantine Sandis, Roger Teichmann

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • Virtue ethicists (5)

  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Elizabeth Anscombe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.

    22 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachael Wiseman, Constantine Sandis, Roger Teichmann

     
  • Iris Murdoch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

    21 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • Modernist novels (5)

  • Death in Venice

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mann's infamous novella of 1912, exploring the link between creativity and self-destruction.

    15 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karolina Watroba, Erica Wickerson, Sean Williams

     
  • Great Gatsby

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.

    14 January 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek

     
  • Heart of Darkness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century

    15 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies

     
  • James Joyce's Ulysses

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's celebrated novel Ulysses.

    14 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Jeri Johnson, Richard Brown

     
  • Mrs Dalloway

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway, published in 1925.

    3 July 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hermione Lee, Jane Goldman, Kathryn Simpson

     
  • 19th-century pseudonymous writers (5)

  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • George Sand

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand

    6 February 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Lenin

    Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.

    16 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev

     
  • Walt Whitman

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the innovative 19th-century poet, who broke away from European literary traditions to become a key figure in the development of American culture.

    27 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Peter Riley, Mark Ford

     
  • Members of the Prussian Academy of Sciences (5)

  • Catherine the Great

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Catherine the Great who set out to transform Russia from a semi-barbaric country into a model of the ideals of the 18th century French Enlightenment.

    23 February 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Hartley, Simon Dixon, Tony Lentin

     
  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Linnaeus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering 18th century Swedish botanist, who devised a method of naming species and a new system for classifying plants and animals.

    20 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Staffan Müller-Wille, Stella Sandford, Steve Jones

     
  • Montesquieu

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.

    14 June 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore

     
  • Jewish agnostics (5)

  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Paul Erdős

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the highly prolific, itinerant 20th century Hungarian mathematician, who enjoyed an unrivalled reputation for problem-solving.

    23 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Colva Roney-Dougal, Timothy Gowers, Andrew Treglown

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Rosalind Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the achievements of the pioneering scientist Rosalind Franklin.

    22 February 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Jim Naismith, Judith Howard

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • English women novelists (5)

  • Aphra Behn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.

    12 October 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch

     
  • Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.

    9 March 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow

     
  • Fanny Burney

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.

    23 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Stevie Smith

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the writer best known for her poem Not Waving But Drowning, whose success has arguably overshadowed her wider work as a poet and novelist.

    16 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jeremy Noel-Tod, Noreen Masud, Will May

     
  • 20th-century English poets (5)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Stevie Smith

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the writer best known for her poem Not Waving But Drowning, whose success has arguably overshadowed her wider work as a poet and novelist.

    16 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jeremy Noel-Tod, Noreen Masud, Will May

     
  • Wilfred Owen

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Britain's greatest war poets, who published only 5 poems in his short life yet whose works became seen as a warning of the futility of wars.

    27 October 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Potter, Fran Brearton, Guy Cuthbertson

     
  • Leipzig University alumni (5)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Tycho Brahe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the innovative 16th-century Danish astronomer, renowned for the accuracy of his observations, all taken before the invention of the telescope.

    2 February 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ole Grell, Adam Mosley, Emma Perkins

     
  • Wagner

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, and legacy of the German composer Richard Wagner, mentor of Nietzsche and disciple of Schopenhauer, who changed the face of 19th century opera.

    20 June 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Deathridge, Lucy Beckett, Michael Tanner

     
  • Physical phenomena (5)

  • Nuclear Fusion

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and science of nuclear fusion, the process that powers stars.

    30 October 2014

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    Featuring: Philippa Browning, Steve Cowley, Justin Wark

     
  • Radiation

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the discovery of radiation, from the idea that light consisted of waves, through electromagnetism to the naming of gamma rays.

    12 November 2009

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    Featuring: Jim Al-Khalili, Frank Close, Frank James

     
  • Superconductivity

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about why some materials lose their electrical resistance at low temperatures and expel their magnetic field and why that matters.

    26 January 2023

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    Featuring: Nigel Hussey, Suchitra Sebastian, Stephen Blundell

     
  • The Vacuum of Space

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Vacuum of Space, from the innards of the atom to the outer reaches of space.

    30 April 2009

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    Featuring: Frank Close, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Ruth Gregory

     
  • Time

    Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?

    30 December 1999

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    Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin

     
  • 16th-century English poets (5)

  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Marlowe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Christopher Marlowe; a forger, a brawler, a spy, but above all a playwright, a poet and the most celebrated writer of his generation.

    7 July 2005

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    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate, Emma J. Smith

     
  • Shakespeare and Literary Criticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.

    4 March 1999

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    Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose

     
  • Shakespeare's Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.

    15 March 2001

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    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo

     
  • Shakespeare's Work

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.

    11 May 2000

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    Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer

     
  • Anglican poets (5)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

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    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

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    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • Christian poets (5)

  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.

    27 September 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs

     
  • Emily Dickinson

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Emily Dickinson, the now-celebrated poet of Amherst, who was prolific yet chose to publish few of her poems.

    11 May 2017

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    Featuring: Fiona Green, Linda Freedman, Paraic Finnerty

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • English satirists (5)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Fanny Burney

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.

    23 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • People from the City of London (5)

  • Chaucer

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Geoffrey Chaucer who immortalised the medieval pilgrimage and the diversity of 14th century English society, in his Canterbury Tales.

    9 February 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Helen Cooper, Ardis Butterfield

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Pope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.

    9 November 2006

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    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold

     
  • Thomas Becket

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Becket, chancellor turned archbishop, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral and whose tomb became a centre of pilgrimage across Europe.

    14 December 2017

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    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Michael Staunton, Danica Summerlin

     
  • 18th-century German male writers (5)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

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    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

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    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Moses Mendelssohn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Moses Mendelssohn, one of the greatest thinkers of the German Enlightenment.

    22 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christopher Clark, Abigail Green, Adam Sutcliffe

     
  • 19th-century German writers (5)

  • Clausewitz and On War

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.

    17 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • German political philosophers (5)

  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • Theoretical historians (5)

  • Clausewitz and On War

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.

    17 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Ibn Khaldun

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.

    4 February 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Sun Tzu and The Art of War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.

    1 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos

     
  • 17th-century Latin-language writers (5)

  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Jan Amos Komenský

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Czech man who tried to use education to build a better understanding between the peoples of Europe who were otherwise divided by religious wars.

    19 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Vladimir Urbanek, Suzanna Ivanic, Howard Hotson

     
  • Johannes Kepler

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.

    29 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Ulinka Rublack, Adam Mosley

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Executed philosophers (5)

  • Cicero

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.

    25 January 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena

     
  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.

    27 September 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs

     
  • Olympe de Gouges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution

    21 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic

     
  • Seneca the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.

    23 February 2017

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    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro

     
  • Socrates

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.

    27 September 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett

     
  • 19th-century male writers (5)

  • Bolivar

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and times of Simon Bolivar, hero of the revolutionary wars that liberated Spanish America from Spain.

    30 October 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony McFarlane, John Fisher, Catherine Davies

     
  • Frederick Douglass

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the prominent abolitionist, who in 1845 told his story in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

    9 February 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Karen Salt, Nicholas Guyatt

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Polidori's The Vampyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.

    07 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Plays adapted into television shows (5)

  • Hamlet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.

    28 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai

     
  • Lear

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Shakespeare’s King Lear, a shocking and violent vision of a broken family in a godless world.

    28 February 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Catherine Belsey

     
  • Macbeth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.

    1 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Smith, Kiernan Ryan, David Schalkwyk

     
  • Romeo and Juliet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud

    17 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith

     
  • The Tempest

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tempest, one of Shakespeare's last and richest plays.

    14 November 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Erin Sullivan, Katherine Duncan-Jones

     
  • 20th-century German philosophers (5)

  • Dietrich Bonhoeffer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Bonhoeffer's ideas about Christian ethics, the role of the Church in a secular world, and his attempts to overthrow Hitler.

    27 September 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eleanor McLaughlin, Tom Greggs

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Rosa Luxemburg

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.

    13 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • 20th-century French novelists (5)

  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Colette

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.

    27 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • 19th-century British short story writers (5)

  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.

    9 March 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Thomas Hardy's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.

    13 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • Members of the Order of Merit (5)

  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.

    21 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Dorothy Hodgkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.

    3 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara

     
  • Paul Dirac

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.

    5 March 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman

     
  • Thomas Hardy's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.

    13 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong

     
  • Former empires (5)

  • Babylon

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the truth behind Babylon, the world’s oldest and most enigmatic of empires; from the the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens to the Whore of Babylon.

    3 June 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Eleanor Robson, Irving Finkel, Andrew George

     
  • Byzantium

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the culture, history and legacy of the eastern Byzantine Empire, and examines why it has so often been sidelined and undermined by historians.

    19 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Charlotte Roueché, John Julius Norwich, Liz James

     
  • The British Empire

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the British Empire, what drove Britain to follow the imperial road and what was its legacy?

    8 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Maria Misra, Peter Cain, Catherine Hall

     
  • The Hittites

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the empire based in the Land of Hatti during the Late Bronze Age, in modern Turkey, and the discoveries there over the last century.

    23 December 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Claudia Glatz, Ilgi Gercek, Christoph Bachhuber

     
  • The Sassanid Empire

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Sassanian Empire, a grand imperial rival to the Roman Empire.

    13 December 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh N. Kennedy, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, James Howard-Johnston

     
  • Ancient Greek philosophers of mind (5)

  • Galen

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Roman physician and medical theorist Galen.

    10 October 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Vivian Nutton, Helen King, Caroline Petit

     
  • Heraclitus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.

    8 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Pythagoras

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.

    10 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor

     
  • Socrates

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.

    27 September 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett

     
  • Philosophers of death (5)

  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

    13 May 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson

     
  • Irony theorists (5)

  • Edward Gibbon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.

    17 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien

     
  • Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.

    26 November 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Socrates

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.

    27 September 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett

     
  • Rhetoric theorists (5)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Edward Gibbon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.

    17 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • 19th-century German non-fiction writers (5)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Philosophers of war (5)

  • Clausewitz and On War

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.

    17 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Machiavelli and the Italian City States

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. Inspired by the model of Cesare Borgia, he wrote a notorious manual of power still read today.

    9 December 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, Evelyn Welch, Lisa Jardine

     
  • Sun Tzu and The Art of War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.

    1 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos

     
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

    13 May 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson

     
  • Epic poets (5)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Ovid

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet whose influence is arguably greater than any poet of the classical age, besides Homer, even though his writing led to his exile.

    29 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Maria Wyke, Gail Trimble, Dunstan Lowe

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • Golden Age Latin writers (5)

  • Catullus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Catullus - some of the greatest verse of his time, and some of the most scurrilous - and his influence on Roman and later poetry

    11 January 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Gail Trimble, Simon Smith, Maria Wyke

     
  • Cicero

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.

    25 January 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena

     
  • Horace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace, one of the greatest poets of his age, the origin of phrases such as carpe diem, nil desperandum and dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

    15 November 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emily Gowers, William Fitzgerald, Ellen O'Gorman

     
  • Julius Caesar

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and reputation of Julius Caesar, one of the most intriguing figures of Roman history.

    2 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christopher Pelling, Catherine Steel, Maria Wyke

     
  • Ovid

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet whose influence is arguably greater than any poet of the classical age, besides Homer, even though his writing led to his exile.

    29 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Maria Wyke, Gail Trimble, Dunstan Lowe

     
  • Members of the Académie Française (5)

  • Louis Pasteur

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.

    18 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Montesquieu

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.

    14 June 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore

     
  • Pierre-Simon Laplace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication

    8 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • Philosophy of religion (5)

  • Deism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Enlightenment idea that God created the universe and then stood back, for it to be understood by reason alone and not revelation.

    8 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Serjeantson, Katie East, Thomas Ahnert

     
  • Free Will(500th programme)

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the problem of free will - the extent to which we are able to choose our actions.

    10 March 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Helen Beebee, Galen Strawson

     
  • Humanism

    Melvyn Bragg examines what happened to Humanism after its invention by Cicero in the first century BC. What does humanism actually mean and is it still a classical force in contemporary ideas?

    8 February 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tony Davies, Lisa Jardine, Simon Goldhill

     
  • Miracles

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of miracles, the subject of fierce theological debate, intense popular piety and serious medical study.

    25 September 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, Janet Soskice, Justin Champion

     
  • Science and Religion

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the relationship and the areas of conflict between science and religion, and examines why mankind seeks to find all encompassing answers in these two realms.

    25 January 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Jay Gould, John Haldane, Hilary Rose

     
  • American male non-fiction writers (5)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Washington and the American Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.

    24 June 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick

     
  • Alumni of Trinity College Dublin (5)

  • Bishop Berkeley

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.

    20 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • Women who experienced pregnancy loss (5)

  • Catherine the Great

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Catherine the Great who set out to transform Russia from a semi-barbaric country into a model of the ideals of the 18th century French Enlightenment.

    23 February 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Hartley, Simon Dixon, Tony Lentin

     
  • Eleanor of Aquitaine

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Eleanor of Aquitaine (c1122-1204), who was a ruler in her own right as well as married to the king of France and then to the king of England.

    28 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lindy Grant, Nicholas Vincent, Julie Barrau

     
  • Frida Kahlo

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, life and times of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo.

    9 July 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patience Schell, Valerie Fraser, Alan Knight

     
  • Marie Antoinette

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian princess who, while still a child, married the future Louis XVI of France only to face hostility and death under the French Revolution.

    8 November 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, David McCallam

     
  • Mary, Queen of Scots

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who might have united the French, English and Scottish thrones.

    19 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Forsyth, Anna Groundwater, John Guy

     
  • Political realists (5)

  • Clausewitz and On War

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.

    17 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Machiavelli and the Italian City States

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. Inspired by the model of Cesare Borgia, he wrote a notorious manual of power still read today.

    9 December 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, Evelyn Welch, Lisa Jardine

     
  • Sun Tzu and The Art of War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.

    1 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos

     
  • Thucydides

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and his work entitled The History of the Peloponnesian War.

    29 January 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Katherine Harloe, Neville Morley

     
  • Deaths from cancer in England (5)

  • Ada Lovelace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century mathematician and hard living daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.

    6 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi

     
  • Maxwell

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.

    2 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh

     
  • Rosalind Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the achievements of the pioneering scientist Rosalind Franklin.

    22 February 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Jim Naismith, Judith Howard

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Trope theorists (5)

  • Cicero

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.

    25 January 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.

    26 November 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson

     
  • The Venerable Bede

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.

    25 November 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown

     
  • Recipients of the Pour le Mérite (civil class) (5)

  • Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.

    30 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans

     
  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • University of Göttingen alumni (5)

  • Bismarck

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the original Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, one of 19th Century Europe’s most influential statesmen and the founder of modern Germany.

    22 March 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard J Evans, Christopher Clark, Katharine Lerman

     
  • Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.

    30 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans

     
  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • Conversationalists (5)

  • Fanny Burney

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.

    23 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan

     
  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Johnson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.

    27 October 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • 17th-century English dramatists and playwrights (5)

  • Aphra Behn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.

    12 October 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Shakespeare and Literary Criticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.

    4 March 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose

     
  • Shakespeare's Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.

    15 March 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo

     
  • Shakespeare's Work

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.

    11 May 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer

     
  • 19th-century British writers (5)

  • Ada Lovelace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century mathematician and hard living daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.

    6 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi

     
  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.

    21 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton

     
  • Christina Rossetti

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.

    1 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton

     
  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Former Roman Catholics (5)

  • Garibaldi and the Risorgimento

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Giuseppe Garibaldi and his role in unifying Italy which, with his Red Shirts, he achieved substantially in 1861 and entirely in 1870.

    1 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lucy Riall, Eugenio Biagini, David Laven

     
  • Hitler in History

    Melvyn Bragg examines the debate between various historiographical theories. How do Intentionalist, Structralist and Marxist views of history explain events in Nazi Germany?

    5 October 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Kershaw, Niall Ferguson, Mary Fulbrook

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • The Curies

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.

    26 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell

     
  • University of Paris alumni (5)

  • Erasmus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most significant figures of the Renaissance.

    9 February 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, Jill Kraye

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • The Curies

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.

    26 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell

     
  • Metaphysical properties (5)

  • Beauty

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the qualities of beauty and the history of aesthetics. Is beauty inherent in things, or in the mind of the observer?

    19 May 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Susan James, Julian Baggini

     
  • Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?

    25 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose

     
  • The Brain and Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.

    19 November 1998

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson

     
  • The Individual

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the concept of the individual, from its place in Renaissance thought, its redefinition by Marx and Freud and its apparent demise in the 20th century.

    21 October 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Wollheim, Jonathan Dollimore

     
  • Truth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.

    18 December 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright

     
  • Metaphysics writers (5)

  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Writers about globalization (5)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Ibn Khaldun

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.

    4 February 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Charles Darwin (5)

  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.

    21 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton

     
  • Chance and Design

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the questions and theories surrounding the idea of a grand design in the universe. Can the concept of the randomness of evolution be compatible with a belief in God?

    13 February 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Conway Morris, Sandy Knapp, John Brooke

     
  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Darwin: The Voyage of the Beagle

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's expedition aboard the Beagle and how it influenced and provided evidence for his theories.

    6 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Jenny Clack

     
  • The Great Exhibition of 1851

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 1851 Great Exhibition. Housed in the magnificent Crystal Palace, the exhibition showcased Victorian Britain's technical ingenuity and industrial might.

    27 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jeremy Black, Hermione Hobhouse, Clive Emsley

     
  • History of science (5)

  • Alchemy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the pursuit of Alchemy, its history and legacy. What ideas could transform base metals into gold?

    24 February 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Lauren Kassell, Stephen Pumfrey

     
  • Ice ages

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ice ages, periods when the temperature of the Earth has dropped to low levels.

    14 February 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Francis, Richard Corfield, Carrie Lear

     
  • Logical Positivism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.

    2 July 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel

     
  • Science and Religion

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the relationship and the areas of conflict between science and religion, and examines why mankind seeks to find all encompassing answers in these two realms.

    25 January 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Jay Gould, John Haldane, Hilary Rose

     
  • Women and Enlightenment Science

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the role played by women in Enlightenment science.

    4 November 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley

     
  • Scientific revolution (5)

  • The Encyclopédie

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the French encyclopédie, one of the great achievements of the Enlightenment with contributors such as Voltaire, Rousseau, D’Alembert and Dennis Diderot.

    26 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Hawley, Caroline Warman, David Wootton

     
  • The Enlightenment in Britain

    Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.

    18 January 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black

     
  • The Scientific method

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific discovery.

    26 January 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, John Worrall, Michela Massimi

     
  • The Scottish Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the emergence and impact of the Scottish Enlightenment which was led by the philosopher David Hume and the father of modern economics, Adam Smith.

    5 December 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tom Devine, Karen O'Brien, Alexander Broadie

     
  • Women and Enlightenment Science

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the role played by women in Enlightenment science.

    4 November 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley

     
  • English travel writers (5)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Johnson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.

    27 October 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Irish male poets (5)

  • Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.

    26 November 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • Concepts in the philosophy of science (5)

  • Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?

    25 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose

     
  • Ockham's Razor

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.

    31 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross

     
  • The Brain and Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.

    19 November 1998

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson

     
  • The Music of the Spheres

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the music of the spheres, the idea that the revolution of the planets generates a celestial harmony of profound beauty

    19 June 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Jim Bennett, Angela Voss

     
  • Time

    Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?

    30 December 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin

     
  • Neuropsychological assessment (5)

  • Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?

    25 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose

     
  • Memory

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the significance of memory. Is it a repository of events waiting to be plucked to consciousness?

    29 May 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Conway, Mike Kopelman, Kim Graham

     
  • Memory and Culture

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how our ways of remembering have changed and explores whether memory itself can remain forever unchanged in its role within our psychology.

    27 May 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Malcolm Bowie, Nancy Wood

     
  • Perception and the Senses

    Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.

    28 April 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert

     
  • The Brain and Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.

    19 November 1998

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson

     
  • Western culture (5)

  • Capitalism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of capitalism and examines whether we have witnessed its triumph or if we are only now learning the full costs and the social impact of its unfettered advance.

    24 June 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anatole Kaletsky, Edward Luttwak

     
  • Democracy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the origins of democracy, across cultures and centuries of Europe and the Middle East.

    18 October 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, David Wootton, Tim Winter

     
  • The Enlightenment in Britain

    Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.

    18 January 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black

     
  • The Renaissance

    Melvyn Bragg explores the veracity of modern claims about the Renaissance and whether our current perceptions about its role in cultural history stem from a 19th century historian.

    8 June 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Francis Ames-Lewis, Peter Burke, Evelyn Welch

     
  • The Schism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses events surrounding the 11th century division of medieval Christendom into what became the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

    16 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Henrietta Leyser, Norman Housley, Jonathan Shepard

     
  • English feminists, English feminist writers (5)

  • Annie Besant

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.

    21 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan

     
  • Aphra Behn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.

    12 October 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch

     
  • Mary Astell

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".

    5 November 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • English Nobel laureates, British Nobel laureates (5)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Dorothy Hodgkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.

    3 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara

     
  • Paul Dirac

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.

    5 March 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Rutherford

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.

    19 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara

     
  • Irish male dramatists and playwrights, Irish expatriates in France (5)

  • Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.

    26 November 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • 20th-century British philosophers (4)

  • Elizabeth Anscombe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.

    22 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachael Wiseman, Constantine Sandis, Roger Teichmann

     
  • Iris Murdoch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

    21 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Alumni of Newnham College, Cambridge (4)

  • Dorothy Hodgkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.

    3 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara

     
  • Elizabeth Anscombe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.

    22 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachael Wiseman, Constantine Sandis, Roger Teichmann

     
  • Iris Murdoch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

    21 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson

     
  • Rosalind Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the achievements of the pioneering scientist Rosalind Franklin.

    22 February 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Jim Naismith, Judith Howard

     
  • Plays set in ancient Greece (4)

  • A Midsummer Night's Dream

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas behind Shakespeare's comedy with its intertwining plots of royal marriage, crossed lovers, quarreling fairies and rude mechanicals

    18 April 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Hackett, Tom Healy, Alison Findlay

     
  • Oedipus Rex

    Melvyn Bragg and guests on Sophocles' tragedy, sometimes called the best play ever written. With Edith Hall, Nick Lowe and Fiona Macintosh.

    08 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nick Lowe, Fiona Macintosh, Edith Hall

     
  • The Bacchae

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great tragedy by Euripides, where Dionysus takes revenge on Thebans who denied his divinity, their king torn to shreds by his mother.

    18 March 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Emily Wilson, Rosie Wyles

     
  • The Oresteia

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the ‘Oresteia’, the first of the Classical tragedies that come out of fifth century Athens. It is a tale of homecoming, murder, bloody vengeance and the establishment of Law.

    29 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill, Tom Healy

     
  • 19th-century American poets (4)

  • Edith Wharton

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Wharton's novels, which explore the world of the privileged in America's Gilded Age, in which she lived, written in hindsight and with little mercy.

    4 October 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hermione Lee, Bridget Bennett, Laura Rattray

     
  • Emily Dickinson

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Emily Dickinson, the now-celebrated poet of Amherst, who was prolific yet chose to publish few of her poems.

    11 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Green, Linda Freedman, Paraic Finnerty

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Walt Whitman

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the innovative 19th-century poet, who broke away from European literary traditions to become a key figure in the development of American culture.

    27 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Peter Riley, Mark Ford

     
  • Hindu texts (4)

  • Arthashastra

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Indian Sanskrit text the Arthashastra.

    3 March 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jessica Frazier, James Hegarty, Deven Patel

     
  • The Bhagavad Gita

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the contents and influence of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most revered texts of Hinduism.

    31 March 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Julius J. Lipner, Jessica Frazier

     
  • The Ramayana

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Sanskrit epic, one of the greatest works of world literature, which is still seen as a sacred and influential text by Hindus today.

    9 March 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jessica Frazier, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Naomi Appleton

     
  • The Upanishads

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Upanishads, the sacred texts of Hinduism. Dating from about 700 BC, their mystical and philosophical nature still resonates today.

    8 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jessica Frazier, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Simon Brodbeck

     
  • Pseudonymous women writers (4)

  • Anna Akhmatova

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) whose work was banned under Stalin and who lived under constant threat of the gulags.

    18 January 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katharine Hodgson, Alexandra Harrington, Michael Basker

     
  • George Sand

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand

    6 February 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness

     
  • Mary Astell

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".

    5 November 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan

     
  • Stevie Smith

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the writer best known for her poem Not Waving But Drowning, whose success has arguably overshadowed her wider work as a poet and novelist.

    16 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jeremy Noel-Tod, Noreen Masud, Will May

     
  • English atheists (4)

  • Alan Turing

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.

    15 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges

     
  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • Stevie Smith

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the writer best known for her poem Not Waving But Drowning, whose success has arguably overshadowed her wider work as a poet and novelist.

    16 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jeremy Noel-Tod, Noreen Masud, Will May

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • 20th-century English novelists (4)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Stevie Smith

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the writer best known for her poem Not Waving But Drowning, whose success has arguably overshadowed her wider work as a poet and novelist.

    16 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jeremy Noel-Tod, Noreen Masud, Will May

     
  • 20th-century pseudonymous writers (4)

  • Anna Akhmatova

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) whose work was banned under Stalin and who lived under constant threat of the gulags.

    18 January 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katharine Hodgson, Alexandra Harrington, Michael Basker

     
  • Fernando Pessoa

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works and life of one of Portugal's greatest poets, who wrote in his own name and in those of several rounded characters he created.

    3 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Cláudia Pazos-Alonso, Juliet Perkins, Paulo de Medeiros

     
  • Lenin

    Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.

    16 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev

     
  • Stevie Smith

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the writer best known for her poem Not Waving But Drowning, whose success has arguably overshadowed her wider work as a poet and novelist.

    16 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jeremy Noel-Tod, Noreen Masud, Will May

     
  • Phase transitions (4)

  • Higgs Boson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Higgs Boson; the God particle, which explains how all mass behaves. It is a legend among physicists but does it exist?

    18 November 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Al-Khalili, David Wark, Roger Cashmore

     
  • Plasma

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss plasma. First observed in 1879, plasma is the most abundant matter in the universe, far more than solid, liquid or gas.

    13 October 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Justin Wark, Kate Lancaster, Bill Graham

     
  • States of Matter

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the science of matter and the states in which it can exist, from solids, liquids and gases to high-energy plasmas.

    3 April 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrea Sella, Athene Donald, Justin Wark

     
  • Superconductivity

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about why some materials lose their electrical resistance at low temperatures and expel their magnetic field and why that matters.

    26 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nigel Hussey, Suchitra Sebastian, Stephen Blundell

     
  • 16th-century male writers (4)

  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Machiavelli and the Italian City States

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. Inspired by the model of Cesare Borgia, he wrote a notorious manual of power still read today.

    9 December 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, Evelyn Welch, Lisa Jardine

     
  • Matteo Ricci and the Ming dynasty

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Matteo Ricci's 16th-century mission to Ming Dynasty China, an important early encounter between east and west.

    16 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Laven, Craig Clunas, Anne Gerritsen

     
  • Montaigne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.

    25 April 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green

     
  • English people of Welsh descent (4)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • The Death of Elizabeth I

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarch became King in the face of plots and plague.

    15 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Guy, Clare Jackson, Helen Hackett

     
  • Wilfred Owen

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Britain's greatest war poets, who published only 5 poems in his short life yet whose works became seen as a warning of the futility of wars.

    27 October 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Potter, Fran Brearton, Guy Cuthbertson

     
  • Metaphor theorists (4)

  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.

    26 November 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • John Murray (publishing house) books (4)

  • Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the poem that made Byron famous.

    6 January 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Jane Stabler, Emily Bernhard Jackson

     
  • Darwin: On the Origin of Species

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. How Darwin was eventually persuaded to publish On the Origin of Species in November 1859.

    7 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, Jim Secord, Johannes Vogel

     
  • Emma

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, which features, according to Austen, 'a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like'.

    19 November 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, John Mullan, Emma Clery

     
  • Persuasion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's final completed novel: the story of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, their broken engagement and their chance meeting 8 years later.

    22 December 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Fiona Stafford, Paddy Bullard

     
  • 19th-century rebellions (4)

  • The Haitian Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804.

    23 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kate Hodgson, Tim Lockley, Karen Salt

     
  • The Indian Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Faisal Devji, Shruti Kapila and Chandrika Kaul discuss the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the rebellion which followed.

    18 February 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Chandrika Kaul, Faisal Devji, Shruti Kapila

     
  • The Morant Bay Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why people in Jamaica protested in 1865, why the British governor killed so many in response and what then changed on both sides of the Atlantic.

    3 November 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Matthew J Smith, Diana Paton, Lawrence Goldman

     
  • The Taiping Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Taiping Rebellion, a Chinese civil war which claimed around 20 million lives in the 19th century.

    24 February 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rana Mitter, Frances Wood, Julia Lovell

     
  • 20th-century English male writers (4)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Wilfred Owen

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Britain's greatest war poets, who published only 5 poems in his short life yet whose works became seen as a warning of the futility of wars.

    27 October 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Potter, Fran Brearton, Guy Cuthbertson

     
  • Elementary particles (4)

  • Higgs Boson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Higgs Boson; the God particle, which explains how all mass behaves. It is a legend among physicists but does it exist?

    18 November 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Al-Khalili, David Wark, Roger Cashmore

     
  • The Electron

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the discovery of this atomic particle in 1897 and what our growing knowledge of electrons has revealed about our world and may yet reveal.

    29 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Victoria Martin, Harry Cliff, Frank Close

     
  • The Neutrino

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the neutrino, a mysterious subatomic particle which is one of the most numerous, and least understood, objects in the universe.

    14 April 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Close, Susan Cartwright, David Wark

     
  • The Photon

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the photon, the fundamental particle associated with light.

    12 February 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Close, Wendy Flavell, Susan Cartwright

     
  • Allegory (4)

  • Animal Farm

    4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.

    29 September 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls

     
  • Moby Dick

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, the story of Ahab and the white whale, the most popular of around 1,000 ideas that listeners submitted.

    7 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Bridget Bennett, Katie McGettigan, Graham Thompson

     
  • Piers Plowman

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Langland's exploration of what it means to live a good life, written when the Black Death had overturned many of the old certainties.

    29 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Lawrence Warner, Alastair Bennett

     
  • Plato's Atlantis

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the legend of the lost island of Atlantis, first told by Plato and taken literally by Renaissance Europeans as they began to explore the oceans.

    22 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Christopher Gill, Angie Hobbs

     
  • 18th-century German philosophers (4)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Heidelberg University alumni (4)

  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Jan Amos Komenský

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Czech man who tried to use education to build a better understanding between the peoples of Europe who were otherwise divided by religious wars.

    19 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Vladimir Urbanek, Suzanna Ivanic, Howard Hotson

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • Deist philosophers (4)

  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Olympe de Gouges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution

    21 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Executed writers (4)

  • Cicero

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.

    25 January 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena

     
  • Federico Garcia Lorca

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, executed by Franco's forces, his body unrecovered.

    4 July 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Maria Delgado, Federico Bonaddio, Sarah Wright

     
  • Olympe de Gouges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution

    21 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic

     
  • Seneca the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.

    23 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro

     
  • French philosophers (4)

  • Olympe de Gouges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution

    21 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic

     
  • Pascal

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.

    19 September 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • Women religious writers (4)

  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Hildegard of Bingen

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.

    26 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum

     
  • Margery Kempe and English Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Margery Kempe (1373-1438), the English mystic who went to Jerusalem and dictated her life story, said to be the first autobiography in English.

    2 June 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Bale

     
  • Olympe de Gouges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution

    21 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic

     
  • 19th-century English non-fiction writers (4)

  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Polidori's The Vampyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.

    07 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Alumni of the University of Edinburgh (4)

  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Maxwell

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.

    2 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh

     
  • Polidori's The Vampyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.

    07 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady

     
  • Writers of Gothic fiction (4)

  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Polidori's The Vampyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.

    07 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady

     
  • Historians of the French Revolution (4)

  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Peter Kropotkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest

    24 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • 20th-century translators (4)

  • Anna Akhmatova

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Anna Akhmatova (1889-1966) whose work was banned under Stalin and who lived under constant threat of the gulags.

    18 January 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katharine Hodgson, Alexandra Harrington, Michael Basker

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Lawrence of Arabia

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lawrence of Arabia, the legend and its context, an idea drawn from over 1200 suggested by listeners this autumn

    5 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hussein Omar, Catriona Pennell, Neil Faulkner

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • Humboldt University of Berlin alumni (4)

  • Bismarck

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the original Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, one of 19th Century Europe’s most influential statesmen and the founder of modern Germany.

    22 March 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard J Evans, Christopher Clark, Katharine Lerman

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • French women novelists (4)

  • Colette

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.

    27 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack

     
  • George Sand

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand

    6 February 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness

     
  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • Burials at Père Lachaise Cemetery (4)

  • Abelard and Heloise

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.

    5 May 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy

     
  • Colette

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.

    27 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • 19th-century English novelists (4)

  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.

    9 March 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow

     
  • Fanny Burney

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.

    23 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan

     
  • Thomas Hardy's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.

    13 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong

     
  • Fellows of the Royal Society of Literature (4)

  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Thomas Hardy's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.

    13 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • British novellas (4)

  • A Christmas Carol

    From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.

    16 December 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch

     
  • Animal Farm

    4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.

    29 September 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls

     
  • Heart of Darkness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century

    15 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies

     
  • The Time Machine

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and anxieties in late Victorian London, explored by HG Wells in his story of time travel, evolution and a planet unfit for humans.

    17 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Amanda Rees, Simon James

     
  • Ancient Greek political philosophers (4)

  • Heraclitus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.

    8 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Socrates

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.

    27 September 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett

     
  • Xenophon

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.

    26 May 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill

     
  • Rationalists (4)

  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • 18th-century classical composers (4)

  • Frederick the Great

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.

    2 July 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup

     
  • Ludwig van Beethoven

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of Beethoven, from Bonn to Vienna, where he became one of the great composers, despite his growing deafness.

    21 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Tunbridge, John Deathridge, Erica Buurman

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • William and Caroline Herschel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.

    11 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett

     
  • 19th-century German male musicians (4)

  • Ludwig van Beethoven

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of Beethoven, from Bonn to Vienna, where he became one of the great composers, despite his growing deafness.

    21 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Tunbridge, John Deathridge, Erica Buurman

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Wagner

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, and legacy of the German composer Richard Wagner, mentor of Nietzsche and disciple of Schopenhauer, who changed the face of 19th century opera.

    20 June 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Deathridge, Lucy Beckett, Michael Tanner

     
  • William and Caroline Herschel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.

    11 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett

     
  • German male classical composers (4)

  • Frederick the Great

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.

    2 July 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup

     
  • Ludwig van Beethoven

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of Beethoven, from Bonn to Vienna, where he became one of the great composers, despite his growing deafness.

    21 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Tunbridge, John Deathridge, Erica Buurman

     
  • Wagner

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, and legacy of the German composer Richard Wagner, mentor of Nietzsche and disciple of Schopenhauer, who changed the face of 19th century opera.

    20 June 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Deathridge, Lucy Beckett, Michael Tanner

     
  • William and Caroline Herschel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.

    11 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett

     
  • British ethicists (4)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Iris Murdoch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

    21 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Adultery in novels (4)

  • Great Gatsby

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.

    14 January 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek

     
  • James Joyce's Ulysses

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's celebrated novel Ulysses.

    14 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Jeri Johnson, Richard Brown

     
  • Madame Bovary

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the literary sensation caused by the trial for indecency of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary.

    12 July 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andy Martin, Mary Orr, Robert Gildea

     
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.

    30 September 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen

     
  • 18th-century English male writers (4)

  • Edward Gibbon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.

    17 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien

     
  • Johnson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.

    27 October 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley

     
  • Pope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.

    9 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Alumni of Magdalen College, Oxford (4)

  • Edward Gibbon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.

    17 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Lawrence of Arabia

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lawrence of Arabia, the legend and its context, an idea drawn from over 1200 suggested by listeners this autumn

    5 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hussein Omar, Catriona Pennell, Neil Faulkner

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • 19th-century British philanthropists (4)

  • Booth's Life and Labour Survey

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's ambitious project to discover how many people in late Victorian London were living in poverty, and understand why

    10 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Griffin, Sarah Wise, Lawrence Goldman

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Octavia Hill

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.

    7 April 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley

     
  • Pitt Rivers

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of the Victorian anthropologist and archaeologist Augustus Pitt-Rivers.

    28 February 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Richard Bradley, Dan Hicks

     
  • English philanthropists (4)

  • Booth's Life and Labour Survey

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's ambitious project to discover how many people in late Victorian London were living in poverty, and understand why

    10 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Griffin, Sarah Wise, Lawrence Goldman

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Octavia Hill

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.

    7 April 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley

     
  • Wilberforce

    In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.

    22 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • Lecturers (4)

  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Historical eras (4)

  • The Dawn of the Iron Age

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the dawn of the European Iron Age, a period of great upheaval when technology and societies were changed forever.

    24 March 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Cunliffe, Sue Hamilton, Timothy Champion

     
  • The Enlightenment in Britain

    Melvyn Bragg examines the part British thinkers played in the Enlightenment in the 18th century, and examines whether the shifts of thought in those years provided the platform for the modern world.

    18 January 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Porter, Linda Colley, Jeremy Black

     
  • The Interregnum

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the unstable rule in England between the execution of Charles I and restoration of Charles II and the impact in Scotland and, infamously, Ireland

    27 May 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Clare Jackson, Micheál Ó Siochrú, Laura Stewart

     
  • The Renaissance

    Melvyn Bragg explores the veracity of modern claims about the Renaissance and whether our current perceptions about its role in cultural history stem from a 19th century historian.

    8 June 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Francis Ames-Lewis, Peter Burke, Evelyn Welch

     
  • Fluid dynamicists (4)

  • Archimedes

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek mathematician Archimedes, brilliant with numbers and unexpectedly good at defensive siege warfare.

    25 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jackie Stedall, Serafina Cuomo, George Phillips

     
  • Pascal

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.

    19 September 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi

     
  • Pierre-Simon Laplace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication

    8 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal

     
  • Robert Boyle

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.

    12 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos

     
  • 19th-century English writers (4)

  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • David Ricardo

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument that Britain's economy was being held back by the interests of landlords and protectionism, and his call for free trade.

    25 March 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Matthew Watson, Helen Paul, Richard Whatmore

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • English Unitarians (4)

  • David Ricardo

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument that Britain's economy was being held back by the interests of landlords and protectionism, and his call for free trade.

    25 March 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Matthew Watson, Helen Paul, Richard Whatmore

     
  • Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.

    9 March 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow

     
  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Utilitarians (4)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • David Ricardo

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument that Britain's economy was being held back by the interests of landlords and protectionism, and his call for free trade.

    25 March 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Matthew Watson, Helen Paul, Richard Whatmore

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • History of climate variability and change (4)

  • Climate change

    Melvyn Bragg examines predictions and solutions for climate change and discusses whether the effects of global warming are already upon us, and if so, how we can really hope to stop them.

    6 January 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Houghton, George Monbiot

     
  • Ice ages

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ice ages, periods when the temperature of the Earth has dropped to low levels.

    14 February 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Francis, Richard Corfield, Carrie Lear

     
  • The Late Devonian Extinction

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the disappearance of up to 70 per cent of species roughly 370 million years ago at the end of The Age of Fishes, and the range of possible causes.

    11 March 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jessica Whiteside, David Bond, Mike Benton

     
  • The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the causes and effects of the highest global temperatures in the last 65m years, when Arctic sea surfaces reached up to 23 C for c100,000 years.

    16 March 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dame Jane Francis, Mark Maslin, Tracy Aze

     
  • Narrative poems (4)

  • Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Childe Harold's Pilgrimage, the poem that made Byron famous.

    6 January 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Jane Stabler, Emily Bernhard Jackson

     
  • Piers Plowman

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Langland's exploration of what it means to live a good life, written when the Black Death had overturned many of the old certainties.

    29 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Lawrence Warner, Alastair Bennett

     
  • The Epic

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the epic form, from it's creation by Homer to its more modern incarnations in the hands of James Joyce, J R R Tolkien and Philip Pullman.

    6 February 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Karen Edwards, Oliver Taplin

     
  • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Coleridge's poem of a grim voyage in which a sailor shoots an albatross and is forced to tell the story of his crime forever.

    4 March 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sir Jonathan Bate, Tom Mole, Rosemary Ashton

     
  • Ancient Roman adoptees (4)

  • Marcus Aurelius

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.

    25 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards

     
  • Nero

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reputation of Nero, popular with his subjects but vilified in his lifetime and after and associated with the Beast in the Book of Revelation.

    25 April 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Maria Wyke, Matthew Nicholls, Shushma Malik

     
  • Pliny the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Roman lawyer and statesman Pliny the Younger, whose letters offer a fascinating insight into his life and the ancient world.

    12 December 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Roy Gibson, Alice König

     
  • The Augustan Age

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.

    11 June 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy

     
  • English evangelicals (4)

  • George Fox and the Quakers

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.

    5 April 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters

     
  • John Wesley and Methodism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world

    10 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson

     
  • Wilberforce

    In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.

    22 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • Wyclif and the Lollards

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval philosopher and theologian John Wyclif and his followers, the Lollards.

    16 June 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Anne Hudson, Rob Lutton

     
  • English abolitionists (4)

  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • John Wesley and Methodism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world

    10 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson

     
  • Wilberforce

    In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.

    22 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • 18th-century English writers (4)

  • Fanny Burney

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.

    23 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan

     
  • Johnson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.

    27 October 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley

     
  • Mary Astell

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".

    5 November 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Feminism and history (4)

  • Aphra Behn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Aphra Behn, known for her plays for the Restoration stage such as The Rover and for her novel Oroonoko.

    12 October 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, Ros Ballaster, Claire Bowditch

     
  • Christine de Pizan

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Christine de Pizan (c1364-1430) who, according to Simone de Beauvoir, was the first woman to 'take up her pen in defence of her sex'.

    8 June 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Swift, Miranda Griffin, Marilynn Desmond

     
  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • Mary Astell

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".

    5 November 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan

     
  • English inventors (4)

  • Alan Turing

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.

    15 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Robert Hooke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Robert Hooke, the 17th-century scientist with a wide variety of interests from elasticity to microscopes who fell out with Newton.

    18 February 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Patricia Fara, Rob Iliffe

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Alumni of St John's College, Cambridge (4)

  • Paul Dirac

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.

    5 March 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman

     
  • Titus Oates and his Popish Plot

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Titus Oates and his role in starting and spreading rumours of a 'Popish Plot' against Charles II.

    12 May 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Clare Jackson, Mark Knights, Peter Hinds

     
  • Wilberforce

    In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.

    22 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • William Cecil

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and influence of the 1st Baron Burghley, Elizabeth I's powerful Secretary of State who advanced England's interests throughout her reign

    7 March 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Susan Doran, John Guy

     
  • French socialists (4)

  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • George Sand

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand

    6 February 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Legion of Honour refusals (4)

  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • George Sand

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand

    6 February 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • The Curies

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.

    26 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell

     
  • Medieval Latin poets (4)

  • Abelard and Heloise

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.

    5 May 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy

     
  • Alcuin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the cleric, educator and poet from York who put learning for its own sake at the heart of the Carolingian Renaissance

    30 January 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Joanna Story, Andy Orchard, Mary Garrison

     
  • Hildegard of Bingen

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.

    26 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • Scholastic philosophers (4)

  • Abelard and Heloise

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.

    5 May 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy

     
  • Alcuin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the cleric, educator and poet from York who put learning for its own sake at the heart of the Carolingian Renaissance

    30 January 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Joanna Story, Andy Orchard, Mary Garrison

     
  • Roger Bacon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.

    20 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • Bisexual male writers (4)

  • Catullus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Catullus - some of the greatest verse of his time, and some of the most scurrilous - and his influence on Roman and later poetry

    11 January 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Gail Trimble, Simon Smith, Maria Wyke

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (4)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Edith Wharton

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Wharton's novels, which explore the world of the privileged in America's Gilded Age, in which she lived, written in hindsight and with little mercy.

    4 October 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hermione Lee, Bridget Bennett, Laura Rattray

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Ree, John Haldane and Gwen Griffith-Dickson discuss The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James.

    13 May 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, John Haldane, Gwen Griffith-Dickson

     
  • Romantic poets (4)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • John Clare

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss John Clare, the 'Northamptonshire peasant poet', whose writing was as celebrated as his life was humble.

    9 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Mina Gorji, Simon Kövesi

     
  • Robert Burns

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Ayrshire farmer whose 'Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect' (1786) set him on the way to a worldwide reputation as one of the great poets.

    24 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Crawford, Fiona Stafford, Murray Pittock

     
  • Liberal theorists (4)

  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Machiavelli and the Italian City States

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. Inspired by the model of Cesare Borgia, he wrote a notorious manual of power still read today.

    9 December 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, Evelyn Welch, Lisa Jardine

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • LGBT Roman Catholics (4)

  • Federico Garcia Lorca

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Federico Garcia Lorca, author of Blood Wedding, Yerma and The House of Bernarda Alba, executed by Franco's forces, his body unrecovered.

    4 July 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Maria Delgado, Federico Bonaddio, Sarah Wright

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Frame stories (4)

  • Frankenstein

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge

    16 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas

     
  • Heart of Darkness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century

    15 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies

     
  • The Arabian Nights

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Arabian Nights - an ever shifting sea of stories across Asia and Europe.

    18 October 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Graham Irwin, Marina Warner, Gerard van Gelder

     
  • Wuthering Heights

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.

    28 September 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis

     
  • École Normale Supérieure alumni (4)

  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • Louis Pasteur

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.

    18 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Phenomenologists (4)

  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • French Nobel laureates (4)

  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • The Curies

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.

    26 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell

     
  • Anti-Catholicism in England (4)

  • Foxe's Book of Martyrs

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Foxe's Book of Martyrs, the celebrated sixteenth-century account of the suffering of Christian martyrs.

    18 November 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Justin Champion, Elizabeth Evenden

     
  • The Dissolution of the Monasteries

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Henry VIII and the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Was Henry’s policy an act of grand larceny or the pious destruction of a corrupt institution?

    27 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Diane Purkiss, George Bernard

     
  • The Glorious Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg examines the Glorious Revolution of 1688 but were the events of 1688 really either Glorious or Revolutionary?

    19 April 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Spurr, Rosemary Sweet, Scott Mandelbrote

     
  • The Gordon Riots

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why a Westminster protest against 'Popery' in June 1780 led to widespread rioting across London, lethally suppressed.

    2 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Haywood, Catriona Kennedy, Mark Knights

     
  • Julio-Claudian dynasty (4)

  • Agrippina the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman empress Agrippina the Younger, one of the most notorious and influential of the Roman empresses in the 1st century AD.

    31 March 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Alice König, Matthew Nicholls

     
  • Nero

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reputation of Nero, popular with his subjects but vilified in his lifetime and after and associated with the Beast in the Book of Revelation.

    25 April 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Maria Wyke, Matthew Nicholls, Shushma Malik

     
  • The Aeneid

    Melvyn Bragg discusses ‘The Aeneid’, Virgil’s great epic poem that formed a founding narrative of Rome.

    21 April 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Philip Hardie, Catharine Edwards

     
  • The Augustan Age

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.

    11 June 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy

     
  • Evolution (4)

  • Chance and Design

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the questions and theories surrounding the idea of a grand design in the universe. Can the concept of the randomness of evolution be compatible with a belief in God?

    13 February 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Conway Morris, Sandy Knapp, John Brooke

     
  • Evolution

    Melvyn Bragg examines the future of gene therapy and advances in evolutionary biology. Could electronic devices discover the means of self-replication, and what would be the consequences?

    15 April 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Maynard Smith, Colin Tudge

     
  • The Cambrian Period

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Cambrian period, a time when evolution took a leap, and life on this planet suddenly went to being large, complex, numerous and dizzyingly diverse.

    17 February 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Conway Morris, Richard Corfield, Jane Francis

     
  • The Evolution of Teeth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about the origins of teeth, their link to hard scales on fish such as sharks and why some species regenerate theirs but humans do not.

    11 April 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Gareth Fraser, Zerina Johanson, Philip Donoghue

     
  • Invasions of England (4)

  • The Danelaw

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how a series of Danish invasions, settlements and battles with Anglo-Saxons changed England in the 9th and 10th centuries.

    28 March 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Jesch, John Hines, Jane Kershaw

     
  • The Glorious Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg examines the Glorious Revolution of 1688 but were the events of 1688 really either Glorious or Revolutionary?

    19 April 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Spurr, Rosemary Sweet, Scott Mandelbrote

     
  • The Jacobite Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Jacobite Rebellion, the Stuart dynasty's final attempt to reclaim the throne of England.

    8 May 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Murray Pittock, Stana Nenadic, Allan Macinnes

     
  • The Spanish Armada

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Spanish Armada, the fleet which attempted to invade Elizabethan England in 1588.

    7 October 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diane Purkiss, Maria Jose Rodriguez-Salgado, Nicholas Rodger

     
  • English Catholic poets (4)

  • Chaucer

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Geoffrey Chaucer who immortalised the medieval pilgrimage and the diversity of 14th century English society, in his Canterbury Tales.

    9 February 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Helen Cooper, Ardis Butterfield

     
  • Gerard Manley Hopkins

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the works of Hopkins, unpublished in his lifetime, who FR Leavis called 'the only influential poet of the Victorian age and the greatest'.

    21 March 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catherine Phillips, Jane Wright, Martin Dubois

     
  • Pope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.

    9 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Trojan War literature (4)

  • The Aeneid

    Melvyn Bragg discusses ‘The Aeneid’, Virgil’s great epic poem that formed a founding narrative of Rome.

    21 April 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Philip Hardie, Catharine Edwards

     
  • The Iliad

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the story of a crucial 40 days in the 10-year battle for Troy, framed by Achilles' anger first at his leader Agamenmon and then at his enemy Hector.

    13 September 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Barbara Graziosi, Paul Cartledge

     
  • The Odyssey

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Homer’s Odyssey, the epic story of the Greek hero Odysseus’ journey back from Troy, and its foundational position in the history of western literature and ideas.

    9 September 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Edith Hall, Oliver Taplin

     
  • The Oresteia

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the ‘Oresteia’, the first of the Classical tragedies that come out of fifth century Athens. It is a tale of homecoming, murder, bloody vengeance and the establishment of Law.

    29 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill, Tom Healy

     
  • English fantasy writers (4)

  • Christina Rossetti

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.

    1 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton

     
  • John Ruskin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.

    31 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • English socialists (4)

  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.

    21 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton

     
  • Annie Besant

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.

    21 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • French male non-fiction writers (4)

  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • Latin prose texts (4)

  • Augustine's Confessions

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Augustine's account of his life, sometimes called the first autobiography, written around AD397 after he had been appointed as Bishop of Hippo.

    15 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kate Cooper, Morwenna Ludlow, Martin Palmer

     
  • Justinian's Legal Code

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss legal ideas developed under Byzantine emperor Justinian I in the C6th AD, which influenced the evolution of law in much of Western civilisation.

    17 November 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Caroline Humfress, Simon Corcoran, Paul du Plessis

     
  • The Consolations of Philosophy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy and asks whether philosophy should lead us toward consolation or lead us from it.

    1 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Melissa Lane, Roger Scruton

     
  • Vitruvius and De Architectura

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Vitruvius's De Architectura, the first major treatise on architecture.

    15 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Serafina Cuomo, Robert Tavernor, Alice König

     
  • Classical humanists (4)

  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • Cicero

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.

    25 January 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena

     
  • Confucius

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.

    1 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu

     
  • The Buddha

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life of Siddhartha Gautama, the originator of Buddhism, and examines why his teachings have now become one of the fastest growing religions of the Western world.

    14 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Harvey, Kate Crosby, Mahinda Deegalle

     
  • Members of the Göttingen Academy of Sciences and Humanities (4)

  • Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.

    30 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • French literary critics (4)

  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • Angelic visionaries (4)

  • Constantine the Great

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Constantine the Great, the Roman emperor who made Constantinople his capital rather than Rome and who legalised Christianity across the Empire.

    5 October 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christopher Kelly, Lucy Grig, Greg Woolf

     
  • Hildegard of Bingen

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.

    26 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum

     
  • Mary Magdalene

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Magdalene, one of the best-known figures in the Bible.

    25 February 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Joanne Anderson, Eamon Duffy, Joan Taylor

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • Male characters in literature (4)

  • Eugene Onegin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), often described as his masterpiece, which tells the tragic story of Onegin, Lensky and Tatyana.

    22 June 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Kahn, Emily Finer, Simon Dixon

     
  • Merlin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Merlin, prophet, magician, king maker and the original mad man of the woods, distraught at the death of his lord in battle.

    30 June 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliette Wood, Stephen Knight, Peter Forshaw

     
  • Robinson Crusoe

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Daniel Defoe's seminal novel Robinson Crusoe. Published in 1719, it was an immediate success and is considered the classic adventure story.

    22 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Judith Hawley, Bob Owens

     
  • Voltaire's Candide

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's satirical novel Candide, first published in 1759.

    3 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Nicholas Cronk, Caroline Warman

     
  • English philosophers (4)

  • John Ruskin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.

    31 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Roger Bacon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.

    20 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt

     
  • William Hazlitt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Bate, Uttara Natarajan and AC Grayling discuss the life and works of William Hazlitt.

    8 April 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, A. C. Grayling, Uttara Natarajan

     
  • English translators (4)

  • Caxton and the Printing Press

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss printer William Caxton and the impact of the printing press in England.

    18 October 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gameson, Julia Boffey, David Rundle

     
  • Chaucer

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Geoffrey Chaucer who immortalised the medieval pilgrimage and the diversity of 14th century English society, in his Canterbury Tales.

    9 February 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Helen Cooper, Ardis Butterfield

     
  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • Roger Bacon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.

    20 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt

     
  • Marxist theorists (4)

  • Lenin

    Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.

    16 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Rosa Luxemburg

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.

    13 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Victorian women writers (4)

  • Annie Besant

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.

    21 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan

     
  • Christina Rossetti

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.

    1 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton

     
  • Elizabeth Gaskell's novel North and South

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her 1855 novel in a version of Manchester she called Milton in the county of Darkshire.

    9 March 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Shuttleworth, Dinah Birch, Jenny Uglow

     
  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • Silver Age Latin writers (4)

  • Pliny the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Roman lawyer and statesman Pliny the Younger, whose letters offer a fascinating insight into his life and the ancient world.

    12 December 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Roy Gibson, Alice König

     
  • Pliny's Natural History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pliny the Elder's Natural History, a comprehensive and influential encyclopedia of the natural sciences written in the first century AD.

    8 July 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Serafina Cuomo, Aude Doody, Liba Taub

     
  • Seneca the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.

    23 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro

     
  • Tacitus and the Decadence of Rome

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman historian Tacitus, whose portrayal of Roman decadence influences the way we see Rome today.

    10 July 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Ellen O'Gorman, Maria Wyke

     
  • American political philosophers (4)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Anti-nationalists (4)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Lenin

    Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.

    16 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Critical theorists (4)

  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • German critics of Christianity (4)

  • Frederick the Great

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.

    2 July 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup

     
  • Hitler in History

    Melvyn Bragg examines the debate between various historiographical theories. How do Intentionalist, Structralist and Marxist views of history explain events in Nazi Germany?

    5 October 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Kershaw, Niall Ferguson, Mary Fulbrook

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • 19th-century British physicists (4)

  • John Dalton

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss scientist John Dalton, who pioneered the development of atomic theory and carried out research into meteorology and colour blindness.

    27 October 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Bennett, Aileen Fyfe, James Sumner

     
  • Maxwell

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.

    2 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Rutherford

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.

    19 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara

     
  • History of technology (4)

  • Consequences of the Industrial Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the far-reaching consequences of the Industrial Revolution, which brought widespread social and intellectual change to Britain.

    30 December 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Humphries, Emma Griffin, Lawrence Goldman

     
  • The Industrial Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Industrial Revolution, a period of rapid technological development which brought widespread social and intellectual change to Britain.

    23 December 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jeremy Black, Pat Hudson, William Ashworth

     
  • The Invention of Photography

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the development and impact of photography in the 1830s, with heliographs, sun pictures, photogenic drawing, Daguerre and Fox Talbot.

    7 July 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Elizabeth Edwards, Alison Morrison-Low

     
  • The Measurement of Time

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the measurement of time and the various methods used for doing so over millennia of human history.

    29 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kristen Lippincott, Jim Bennett, Jonathan Betts

     
  • Women mystics (4)

  • Annie Besant

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.

    21 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan

     
  • Hildegard of Bingen

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.

    26 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum

     
  • Margery Kempe and English Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Margery Kempe (1373-1438), the English mystic who went to Jerusalem and dictated her life story, said to be the first autobiography in English.

    2 June 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Bale

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Female characters in literature (4)

  • Jane Eyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

    18 June 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons

     
  • Madame Bovary

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the literary sensation caused by the trial for indecency of Gustave Flaubert's novel Madame Bovary.

    12 July 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andy Martin, Mary Orr, Robert Gildea

     
  • Mrs Dalloway

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway, published in 1925.

    3 July 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hermione Lee, Jane Goldman, Kathryn Simpson

     
  • Tess of the d'Urbervilles

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, which challenged Victorian morality and made Hardy's fortune when published in the 1890s.

    5 May 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Francis O'Gorman, Jane Thomas

     
  • English physicists (4)

  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Robert Boyle

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.

    12 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos

     
  • Robert Hooke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Robert Hooke, the 17th-century scientist with a wide variety of interests from elasticity to microscopes who fell out with Newton.

    18 February 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Patricia Fara, Rob Iliffe

     
  • English republicans (4)

  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • People associated with electricity (4)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Maxwell

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.

    2 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Thomas Edison

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.

    9 December 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus

     
  • Pseudoscience (4)

  • Lysenkoism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the dark world of science under Joseph Stalin through the career of his chief geneticist Trofim Lysenko.

    5 June 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Service, Steve Jones, Catherine Merridale

     
  • Perpetual motion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the laws of thermodynamics put a stop to the idea perpetual motion.

    24 September 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Gregory, Frank Close, Steven Bramwell

     
  • Social Darwinism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Social Darwinism, a school of thought which attempted to apply Darwin's ideas about evolution to human society.

    20 February 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Gregory Radick, Charlotte Sleigh

     
  • Vitalism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Vitalism, an 18th and 19th century quest for the spark of life and the science behind Frankenstein.

    16 October 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Andrew Mendelsohn, Pietro Corsi

     
  • Physics beyond the Standard Model (4)

  • Dark matter

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that is believed to make up most of the universe.

    12 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Gresham Professor of Astronomy Carlos Frenk, Anne Green

     
  • Grand unified theory

    Melvyn Bragg examines 20th century’s physics’ search for one theory that can explain the behaviour of the smallest particle as well as the movements of the largest planets in the Universe.

    24 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Brian Greene, Martin Rees

     
  • Quantum Gravity

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the attempts to understand the Quantum world, which deals with the smallest invisible particles, and to which classical theories of gravity, motion and relativity do not apply.

    22 February 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Gribbin, Lee Smolin, Janna Levin

     
  • Theories of Everything

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the prospect of a single theory to solve the riddle of black holes, the Big Bang and the mystery of time travel. Why do we need one and what would it mean if we had it?

    25 March 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Brian Greene, John Barrow, Val Gibson

     
  • Theoretical physics (4)

  • Dark matter

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that is believed to make up most of the universe.

    12 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Gresham Professor of Astronomy Carlos Frenk, Anne Green

     
  • Relativity

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Einstein's theory of relativity, a hypothetical framework that transformed our understanding of the universe.

    6 June 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Gregory, Martin Rees, Roger Penrose

     
  • Symmetry

    Melvyn Bragg discusses symmetry in art and nature. From snowflakes and butterflies to the music of Bach and the poems of Pushkin.

    19 April 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fay Dowker, Marcus du Sautoy, Ian Stewart

     
  • Theories of Everything

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the prospect of a single theory to solve the riddle of black holes, the Big Bang and the mystery of time travel. Why do we need one and what would it mean if we had it?

    25 March 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Brian Greene, John Barrow, Val Gibson

     
  • Unsolved problems in astronomy (4)

  • Dark Energy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the recently discovered, and mysteriously named, 'dark energy' which may make up 70% of the universe.

    17 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Roger Penrose

     
  • Dark matter

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that is believed to make up most of the universe.

    12 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Gresham Professor of Astronomy Carlos Frenk, Anne Green

     
  • Extra Terrestrials

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether there are reasons to suppose that some form of life might exist beyond, or even within, our solar system and what our chances of ever discovering such a planet are.

    4 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goodwin, Heather Couper, Ian Stewart

     
  • The Universe's Shape

    Melvyn Bragg discusses shape, size and topology of the universe and examines theories about its expansion. If it is already infinite, how can it be getting any bigger? And is there really only one?

    7 February 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Julian Barbour, Janna Levin

     
  • Fabulists (4)

  • Aesop

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aesop, legendary author of the famous collection of fables.

    20 November 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Pavlos Avlamis, Lucy Grig, Simon Goldhill

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Kafka's The Trial

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.

    27 November 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson

     
  • Irish Anglicans (4)

  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Robert Boyle

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.

    12 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • Independent scientists (4)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • Robert Boyle

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.

    12 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos

     
  • Members of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (4)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • Geology theories (4)

  • Ageing the Earth

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Age of the Earth, and how to make sense of four and half billions years of time.

    20 November 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Corfield, Hazel Rymer, Henry Gee

     
  • Catastrophism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Catastrophism, the idea that the geological record was shaped by a series of natural disasters early in the Earth's history.

    30 January 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Scott, Jan Zalasiewicz, Leucha Veneer

     
  • Plate Tectonics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how the geological theory of plate tectonics revolutionised our understanding of the planet on which we live

    24 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Corfield, Joe Cann, Lynne Frostick

     
  • The Earth's Origins

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the origins of the Earth, from creation theory to modern scientific thought.

    5 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Winchester, Cherry Lewis, John Cosgrove

     
  • Philosophical methodology (4)

  • Empiricism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the development of the idea formulated by John Locke that all knowledge arises from experience, and looks at its effect on the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.

    10 June 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Hawley, Murray Pittock, Jonathan Rée

     
  • Ordinary language philosophy

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Ordinary Language Philosophy, one of the most important British contributions to 20th-century thought.

    7 November 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Ray Monk, Julia Tanney

     
  • Scepticism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of philosophical scepticism.

    5 July 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Melissa Lane, Jill Kraye

     
  • The Examined Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what self-examination through philosophy can teach us about living our lives, and where it ranks in our quest for self-knowledge alongside science, the arts and religion.

    9 May 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Julian Baggini

     
  • Critics of atheism (4)

  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Pascal

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.

    19 September 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • Spirituality (4)

  • Gnosticism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Gnosticism, a religious sect associated with early Christianity.

    2 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, Caroline Humfress, Alastair Logan

     
  • Neoplatonism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Neoplatonism, a mystical school of thought founded by the third century philosopher Plotinus.

    19 April 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, Anne Sheppard

     
  • Prayer

    Melvyn Bragg examines the purpose and effects of prayer, and discusses whether it is an instrument of action or simply the most essential form of self analysis.

    23 December 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Russell Stannard, Andrew Samuels

     
  • Shinto

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Japanese belief system of Shinto.

    22 September 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, Richard Bowring, Lucia Dolce

     
  • Wars involving the United Kingdom (4)

  • The Boxer Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Boxer Rebellion, when the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists purged China of foreign influences in the summer of 1900.

    19 March 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Rana Mitter, R. G. Tiedemann

     
  • The Indian Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Faisal Devji, Shruti Kapila and Chandrika Kaul discuss the Indian Mutiny of 1857 and the rebellion which followed.

    18 February 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Chandrika Kaul, Faisal Devji, Shruti Kapila

     
  • The Taiping Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Taiping Rebellion, a Chinese civil war which claimed around 20 million lives in the 19th century.

    24 February 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rana Mitter, Frances Wood, Julia Lovell

     
  • The War of 1812

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the War of 1812, the conflict between America and Great Britain which is sometimes referred to as the second American War of Independence.

    31 January 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Lawrence Goldman, Frank Cogliano

     
  • 20th-century British essayists (4)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Free speech activists (4)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Washington and the American Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.

    24 June 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick

     
  • Freethought writers (4)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Neuroscience (4)

  • Neuroscience

    Melvyn Bragg and guests David Papineau, Martin Conway and Gemma Calvert discuss recent developments in neuroscience and examine the relationship between the mind and the brain.

    13 November 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Conway, Gemma Calvert, David Papineau

     
  • Neuroscience in the 20th Century

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of neuroscience, how far scientists have got with understanding the brain and what their research can tell us about ourselves and the world we live in.

    24 December 1998

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Greenfield, Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

     
  • The Mind/Body Problem

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?

    13 January 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James

     
  • The Nervous System

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and science of the nervous system, the network of tissues which allows parts of the body to communicate with each other.

    10 February 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Colin Blakemore, Vivian Nutton, Tilli Tansey

     
  • Rhetoric (4)

  • Common Sense Philosophy

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 18th century common sense philosophy which involves the most profound questions about human knowledge we are capable of asking.

    21 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Melissa Lane, Alexander Broadie

     
  • Rhetoric

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Rhetoric, the art of speaking which is an expression of inner virtue and also fundamental to ideas about democracy.

    28 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Thomas Healy, Ceri Sullivan

     
  • Roman Satire

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Mary Beard, Denis Feeney and Duncan Kennedy discuss Roman satire.

    22 April 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Denis Feeney, Duncan Kennedy

     
  • The Examined Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what self-examination through philosophy can teach us about living our lives, and where it ranks in our quest for self-knowledge alongside science, the arts and religion.

    9 May 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Julian Baggini

     
  • Modernism (4)

  • Existentialism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses existentialism, a twentieth century philosophy of everyday life concerned with the individual, and his or her place within the world.

    28 June 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Christina Howells, Simon Critchley

     
  • Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.

    26 November 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson

     
  • Modernist Utopias

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the mad, bad world of modern utopias where babies are hatched from test tubes, where women live without men, where machines have taken over, and where the poor are exterminated.

    10 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Steven Connor, Laura Marcus

     
  • The Avant Garde's Decline and Fall in the 20th Century

    Melvyn Bragg examines the social and aesthetic impact of the Avant Garde and discusses whether it has failed in making painting relevant in the 20th century.

    25 February 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Eric Hobsbawm, Frances Morris

     
  • Neoclassical writers (4)

  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Pope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.

    9 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • The Scriblerus Club

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Scriblerus Club which included some of the sharpest satirists of the 18th century.

    9 June 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Marcus Walsh

     
  • Aesthetics (4)

  • Inspiration and Genius

    Melvyn Bragg examines the true meaning of genius and whether it is born or made. What circumstances are necessary for the great leaps of consciousness that inspire the development of science and art?

    15 June 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Arthur I. Miller, Michael Howe, Juliet Mitchell

     
  • Modernist Utopias

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the mad, bad world of modern utopias where babies are hatched from test tubes, where women live without men, where machines have taken over, and where the poor are exterminated.

    10 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Steven Connor, Laura Marcus

     
  • Symmetry

    Melvyn Bragg discusses symmetry in art and nature. From snowflakes and butterflies to the music of Bach and the poems of Pushkin.

    19 April 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fay Dowker, Marcus du Sautoy, Ian Stewart

     
  • The Artist

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the rise of the idea of the artist and the claims made for it, and examines the role that aristocratic patronage of the arts has played in changing the status of the artist.

    28 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Barker, Thomas Healy, Tim Blanning

     
  • Literary archetypes (4)

  • Don Quixote

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the importance, originality and enduring appeal of Cervantes’ classic 17th century Spanish novel Don Quixote, a cornerstone of Western literature.

    16 March 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Ife, Edwin Williamson, Jane Whetnall

     
  • Heroism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what defines a hero, and their place in classical society. Nietzsche, the Romantics, Renaissance idealism and classical tragedy are brought to bear on the age old heroic ideal.

    6 May 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, A. C. Grayling, Paul Cartledge

     
  • Merlin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Merlin, prophet, magician, king maker and the original mad man of the woods, distraught at the death of his lord in battle.

    30 June 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliette Wood, Stephen Knight, Peter Forshaw

     
  • Robin Hood

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the centuries old myth of the most romantic noble outlaw. Was he a yeoman, an aristocrat, an anarchist or the figment of a collective imagination?

    30 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Knight, Thomas Hahn, Juliette Wood

     
  • Philosophy of love (4)

  • Friendship

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the concept of friendship, considered in antiquity as being an essential constituent of both a good society and a good life.

    2 March 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Mark Vernon, John Mullan

     
  • Happiness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether 'happiness' means living a life of pleasure or of virtue. How much does this ancient philosophical debate still define what it means to be happy today?

    24 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Simon Blackburn, A. C. Grayling

     
  • Marriage

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the institution of marriage from ancient Greeks and Babylonian times to today, and examines how monogamy came to be the favoured mode in the West.

    21 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Soskice, Frederik Pedersen, Christina Hardyment

     
  • The Philosophy of Love

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of love, a search for a completeness in human nature.

    29 March 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roger Scruton, Angie Hobbs, Thomas Docherty

     
  • Anthropology (4)

  • Archaeology and Imperialism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the link between archaeology and imperialism, and why there was such a fascination with Egypt, Greece and Mesopotamia in the 18th and 19th centuries.

    14 April 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Champion, Richard Parkinson, Eleanor Robson

     
  • Human Evolution

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of human evolution, a tale not of one species, but of many – some of whom walked the Earth at the same time.

    16 February 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, Fred Spoor, Margaret Clegg

     
  • Masculinity in Literature

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the changing archetypes of masculinity in 20th century literature, from Hemingway to Hornby, and examines whether the British ideal is at odds with its American counterpart.

    20 January 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Amis, Cora Kaplan

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • English Roman Catholic saints, History of Catholicism in England (4)

  • Saint Cuthbert

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life of the Northumbrian monk, priest and hermit who lived on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and became one of England's most revered saints.

    28 January 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Hawkes, Sarah Foot, John Hines

     
  • St Hilda

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Hilda, who led a large and influential network of monasteries in 7th century Britain.

    5 April 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Blair, Rosemary Cramp, Sarah Foot

     
  • The Venerable Bede

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.

    25 November 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown

     
  • Thomas Becket

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Becket, chancellor turned archbishop, who was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral and whose tomb became a centre of pilgrimage across Europe.

    14 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Michael Staunton, Danica Summerlin

     
  • 20th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights, 20th-century Irish poets, 20th-century Irish male writers (4)

  • Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.

    26 November 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson

     
  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • Anglo-Irish artists, Irish fantasy writers (4)

  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • English Renaissance dramatists, 16th-century English dramatists and playwrights (4)

  • Marlowe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Christopher Marlowe; a forger, a brawler, a spy, but above all a playwright, a poet and the most celebrated writer of his generation.

    7 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jonathan Bate, Emma J. Smith

     
  • Shakespeare and Literary Criticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.

    4 March 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose

     
  • Shakespeare's Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.

    15 March 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo

     
  • Shakespeare's Work

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.

    11 May 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer

     
  • Cambridge University Moral Sciences Club (3)

  • Elizabeth Anscombe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.

    22 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachael Wiseman, Constantine Sandis, Roger Teichmann

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Fellows of the British Academy (3)

  • Elizabeth Anscombe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.

    22 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachael Wiseman, Constantine Sandis, Roger Teichmann

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • The Needham Question

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Needham Question, which asks why China’s medieval technological advancement was overtaken by that of a relative backwater called Europe.

    19 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Chris Cullen, Tim Barrett, Frances Wood

     
  • Presidents of the Aristotelian Society (3)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Elizabeth Anscombe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.

    22 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachael Wiseman, Constantine Sandis, Roger Teichmann

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Roman Catholic writers (3)

  • Elizabeth Anscombe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential thinker who rejuvenated moral philosophy in the postwar period.

    22 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachael Wiseman, Constantine Sandis, Roger Teichmann

     
  • Pope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.

    9 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Roman à clef novels (3)

  • Animal Farm

    4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.

    29 September 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls

     
  • Death in Venice

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mann's infamous novella of 1912, exploring the link between creativity and self-destruction.

    15 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karolina Watroba, Erica Wickerson, Sean Williams

     
  • Heart of Darkness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Joseph Conrad's Novel, Heart of Darkness, a critique of colonialism at the turn of the century

    15 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Jones, Robert Hampson, Laurence Davies

     
  • Fiction about regicide (3)

  • Hamlet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.

    28 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai

     
  • Macbeth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.

    1 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Smith, Kiernan Ryan, David Schalkwyk

     
  • Oedipus Rex

    Melvyn Bragg and guests on Sophocles' tragedy, sometimes called the best play ever written. With Edith Hall, Nick Lowe and Fiona Macintosh.

    08 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nick Lowe, Fiona Macintosh, Edith Hall

     
  • Plays based on classical mythology (3)

  • Oedipus Rex

    Melvyn Bragg and guests on Sophocles' tragedy, sometimes called the best play ever written. With Edith Hall, Nick Lowe and Fiona Macintosh.

    08 June 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nick Lowe, Fiona Macintosh, Edith Hall

     
  • The Bacchae

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great tragedy by Euripides, where Dionysus takes revenge on Thebans who denied his divinity, their king torn to shreds by his mother.

    18 March 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Emily Wilson, Rosie Wyles

     
  • The Oresteia

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the ‘Oresteia’, the first of the Classical tragedies that come out of fifth century Athens. It is a tale of homecoming, murder, bloody vengeance and the establishment of Law.

    29 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill, Tom Healy

     
  • 1st-century BC Latin books (3)

  • The Aeneid

    Melvyn Bragg discusses ‘The Aeneid’, Virgil’s great epic poem that formed a founding narrative of Rome.

    21 April 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Philip Hardie, Catharine Edwards

     
  • Virgil's Georgics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman poet's celebration of agriculture and rural life composed in 29BC after a civil war, when questions of land ownership were contested.

    18 May 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Katharine Earnshaw, Neville Morley, Diana Spencer

     
  • Vitruvius and De Architectura

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Vitruvius's De Architectura, the first major treatise on architecture.

    15 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Serafina Cuomo, Robert Tavernor, Alice König

     
  • American male journalists (3)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Frederick Douglass

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the prominent abolitionist, who in 1845 told his story in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

    9 February 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Karen Salt, Nicholas Guyatt

     
  • Walt Whitman

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the innovative 19th-century poet, who broke away from European literary traditions to become a key figure in the development of American culture.

    27 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Peter Riley, Mark Ford

     
  • 19th-century mystics (3)

  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Walt Whitman

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the innovative 19th-century poet, who broke away from European literary traditions to become a key figure in the development of American culture.

    27 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Peter Riley, Mark Ford

     
  • War writers (3)

  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Walt Whitman

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the innovative 19th-century poet, who broke away from European literary traditions to become a key figure in the development of American culture.

    27 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Peter Riley, Mark Ford

     
  • Wilfred Owen

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Britain's greatest war poets, who published only 5 poems in his short life yet whose works became seen as a warning of the futility of wars.

    27 October 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Potter, Fran Brearton, Guy Cuthbertson

     
  • 6th-century BC Greek philosophers (3)

  • Heraclitus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.

    8 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren

     
  • Pythagoras

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.

    10 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor

     
  • Solon the Lawgiver

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the statesman and poet whose political and legal reforms transformed Athens in the 6th century BC.

    23 March 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Hans van Wees, William Allan

     
  • Jewish atheists (3)

  • Kafka's The Trial

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.

    27 November 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Paul Erdős

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the highly prolific, itinerant 20th century Hungarian mathematician, who enjoyed an unrivalled reputation for problem-solving.

    23 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Colva Roney-Dougal, Timothy Gowers, Andrew Treglown

     
  • Probability theorists (3)

  • Pascal

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.

    19 September 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi

     
  • Paul Erdős

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the highly prolific, itinerant 20th century Hungarian mathematician, who enjoyed an unrivalled reputation for problem-solving.

    23 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Colva Roney-Dougal, Timothy Gowers, Andrew Treglown

     
  • Pierre-Simon Laplace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication

    8 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal

     
  • Foreign Members of the Royal Society (3)

  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • Louis Pasteur

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.

    18 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys

     
  • Paul Erdős

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the highly prolific, itinerant 20th century Hungarian mathematician, who enjoyed an unrivalled reputation for problem-solving.

    23 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Colva Roney-Dougal, Timothy Gowers, Andrew Treglown

     
  • Institute for Advanced Study visiting scholars (3)

  • Emmy Noether

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and achievements of one of the great 20th-century mathematicians.

    24 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Colva Roney-Dougal, David Berman, Elizabeth Mansfield

     
  • Paul Dirac

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.

    5 March 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman

     
  • Paul Erdős

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the highly prolific, itinerant 20th century Hungarian mathematician, who enjoyed an unrivalled reputation for problem-solving.

    23 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Colva Roney-Dougal, Timothy Gowers, Andrew Treglown

     
  • Social history of the United Kingdom (3)

  • Chartism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th-century campaign for greater democracy: the changes demanded in the People's Charter included votes for all men and secret ballots.

    9 Feb 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Joan Allen, Emma Griffin, Robert Saunders

     
  • The History of the Royal Society

    4–7 January 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • The Royal Society

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how the formation of the Royal Society heralded the dawning of a new scientific era in the 17th century.

    23 March 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Pumfrey, Lisa Jardine, Michael Hunter

     
  • 16th-century Latin-language writers (3)

  • Erasmus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most significant figures of the Renaissance.

    9 February 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, Jill Kraye

     
  • Johannes Kepler

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.

    29 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Ulinka Rublack, Adam Mosley

     
  • Tycho Brahe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the innovative 16th-century Danish astronomer, renowned for the accuracy of his observations, all taken before the invention of the telescope.

    2 February 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ole Grell, Adam Mosley, Emma Perkins

     
  • Copernican Revolution (3)

  • Johannes Kepler

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the German astronomer Johannes Kepler.

    29 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Ulinka Rublack, Adam Mosley

     
  • The Laws of Motion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion – three sentences that explain the movements of everything from planets to ping pong balls.

    3 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Raymond Flood, Rob Iliffe

     
  • Tycho Brahe

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the innovative 16th-century Danish astronomer, renowned for the accuracy of his observations, all taken before the invention of the telescope.

    2 February 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ole Grell, Adam Mosley, Emma Perkins

     
  • Phases of matter (3)

  • Plasma

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss plasma. First observed in 1879, plasma is the most abundant matter in the universe, far more than solid, liquid or gas.

    13 October 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Justin Wark, Kate Lancaster, Bill Graham

     
  • States of Matter

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the science of matter and the states in which it can exist, from solids, liquids and gases to high-energy plasmas.

    3 April 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrea Sella, Athene Donald, Justin Wark

     
  • Superconductivity

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about why some materials lose their electrical resistance at low temperatures and expel their magnetic field and why that matters.

    26 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nigel Hussey, Suchitra Sebastian, Stephen Blundell

     
  • Exotic matter (3)

  • Dark matter

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that is believed to make up most of the universe.

    12 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Gresham Professor of Astronomy Carlos Frenk, Anne Green

     
  • Superconductivity

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about why some materials lose their electrical resistance at low temperatures and expel their magnetic field and why that matters.

    26 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nigel Hussey, Suchitra Sebastian, Stephen Blundell

     
  • The Neutrino

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the neutrino, a mysterious subatomic particle which is one of the most numerous, and least understood, objects in the universe.

    14 April 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Close, Susan Cartwright, David Wark

     
  • Unsolved problems in physics (3)

  • Dark Energy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the recently discovered, and mysteriously named, 'dark energy' which may make up 70% of the universe.

    17 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Roger Penrose

     
  • Gravitational Waves

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Gravitational Waves, mysterious phenomena that ripple the fabric of space-time.

    17 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Al-Khalili, Carolin Crawford, Sheila Rowan

     
  • Superconductivity

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about why some materials lose their electrical resistance at low temperatures and expel their magnetic field and why that matters.

    26 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nigel Hussey, Suchitra Sebastian, Stephen Blundell

     
  • Spintronics (3)

  • Pauli's exclusion principle

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the key principles in quantum mechanics, the Pauli Exclusion Principle, and the life and ideas of Wolfgang Pauli who proposed it.

    6 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Close, Michela Massimi, Graham Farmelo

     
  • Superconductivity

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss ideas about why some materials lose their electrical resistance at low temperatures and expel their magnetic field and why that matters.

    26 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nigel Hussey, Suchitra Sebastian, Stephen Blundell

     
  • The Electron

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the discovery of this atomic particle in 1897 and what our growing knowledge of electrons has revealed about our world and may yet reveal.

    29 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Victoria Martin, Harry Cliff, Frank Close

     
  • Political theories (3)

  • Chinese Legalism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of Chinese Legalism under the First Emperor, its relationship with Confucianism and its legacy today.

    10 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Hilde de Weerdt, Roel Sterckx

     
  • Rawls's Theory of Justice

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, first published in 1971, a work that's been called the most influential book in 20th-century political philosophy.

    19 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fabienne Peter, Martin O'Neill, Jonathan Wolff

     
  • Social Darwinism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Social Darwinism, a school of thought which attempted to apply Darwin's ideas about evolution to human society.

    20 February 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Gregory Radick, Charlotte Sleigh

     
  • Epigrammatists (3)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Pamphleteers (3)

  • John Donne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary life and work of one of England's finest love poets and, as Dean of St Paul's Cathedral, most remarkable preachers.

    12 January 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Ann Lund, Sue Wiseman, Hugh Adlington

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • 18th-century rebellions (3)

  • The French Revolution's Legacy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the legacy of the French Revolution. What kind of a watershed did the French Revolution mark in the tide of history?

    14 June 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stefan Collini, Anne Janowitz, Andrew Roberts

     
  • The Haitian Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Haitian Revolution of 1791-1804.

    23 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kate Hodgson, Tim Lockley, Karen Salt

     
  • The Irish Rebellion of 1798

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the uprising in 1798 led by the United Irishmen, who were inspired by American and French revolutions, and the impact this had across Ireland.

    8 December 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian McBride, Catriona Kennedy, Liam Chambers

     
  • Worms, Germany (3)

  • The Concordat of Worms

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Concordat of Worms of 1122, a negotiation which marked a temporary lull in the power struggle between the papacy and the Holy Roman Empire.

    15 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Henrietta Leyser, Kate Cushing, John Gillingham

     
  • The Diet of Worms

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Diet of Worms where the Holy Roman Emperor demanded Martin Luther explain his attacks on the Catholic Church. The ensuing arguments helped trigger the Reformation.

    12 October 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, David Bagchi, Charlotte Methuen

     
  • The Nibelungenlied

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the epic German poem of Siegfried and Kriemhild against Gunther and Brunhilda, two powerful couples whose friendship turns to rivalry and revenge.

    1 December 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Bowden, Mark Chinca, Bettina Bildhauer

     
  • Royal Society (3)

  • The Challenger Expedition 1872–1876

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable Victorian scientific voyage around the world and its mission to explore the ocean depths and search for new life.

    24 November 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Erika Jones, Sam Robinson, Giles Miller

     
  • The History of the Royal Society

    4–7 January 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • The Royal Society

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how the formation of the Royal Society heralded the dawning of a new scientific era in the 17th century.

    23 March 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Pumfrey, Lisa Jardine, Michael Hunter

     
  • British Army personnel of World War I (3)

  • Lawrence of Arabia

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lawrence of Arabia, the legend and its context, an idea drawn from over 1200 suggested by listeners this autumn

    5 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hussein Omar, Catriona Pennell, Neil Faulkner

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Wilfred Owen

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Britain's greatest war poets, who published only 5 poems in his short life yet whose works became seen as a warning of the futility of wars.

    27 October 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Potter, Fran Brearton, Guy Cuthbertson

     
  • People with post-traumatic stress disorder (3)

  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Wilfred Owen

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Britain's greatest war poets, who published only 5 poems in his short life yet whose works became seen as a warning of the futility of wars.

    27 October 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Potter, Fran Brearton, Guy Cuthbertson

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • English LGBT poets (3)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Wilfred Owen

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Britain's greatest war poets, who published only 5 poems in his short life yet whose works became seen as a warning of the futility of wars.

    27 October 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Potter, Fran Brearton, Guy Cuthbertson

     
  • English writers with disabilities (3)

  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Wilfred Owen

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Britain's greatest war poets, who published only 5 poems in his short life yet whose works became seen as a warning of the futility of wars.

    27 October 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Potter, Fran Brearton, Guy Cuthbertson

     
  • British science fiction novels (3)

  • Frankenstein

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge

    16 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas

     
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you

    15 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen

     
  • The Time Machine

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and anxieties in late Victorian London, explored by HG Wells in his story of time travel, evolution and a planet unfit for humans.

    17 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Amanda Rees, Simon James

     
  • Dystopian novels (3)

  • Animal Farm

    4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.

    29 September 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls

     
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you

    15 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen

     
  • The Time Machine

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and anxieties in late Victorian London, explored by HG Wells in his story of time travel, evolution and a planet unfit for humans.

    17 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Amanda Rees, Simon James

     
  • English novels (3)

  • Animal Farm

    4 Extra Debut. Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Orwell's Animal Farm, which he struggled to publish in WW2 as the USSR was an ally. From 2016.

    29 September 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Mary Vincent, Robert Colls

     
  • Middlemarch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's Study of Provincial Life, set before the Reform Act 1832 in a small, fictional town in the Midlands surrounded by farmland.

    18 April 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Kathryn Hughes, John Bowen

     
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you

    15 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen

     
  • Novels set in London (3)

  • A Christmas Carol

    From Bah Humbug to God Bless Us Every One: Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Dickens' story of Scrooge's salvation by the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet To Come.

    16 December 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliet John, Jon Mee, Dinah Birch

     
  • Mrs Dalloway

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Virginia Woolf's novel Mrs Dalloway, published in 1925.

    3 July 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hermione Lee, Jane Goldman, Kathryn Simpson

     
  • Nineteen Eighty-Four

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Orwell's dystopian novel where the state rewrites history, war is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength - and Big Brother is watching you

    15 September 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Dwan, Lisa Mullen, John Bowen

     
  • Light sources (3)

  • The Death of Stars

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how so much in the Universe, and much of our understanding of it, depends on changes in stars as they die after millions or billions of stable years

    9 June 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Mark Sullivan

     
  • The Life of Stars

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life cycle of stars. They are born among vast swirls of gas and dust and they die in stunning explosions.

    27 Mar 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Murdin, Janna Levin, Phil Charles

     
  • The Sun

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the science of the sun, source of all our energy.

    10 July 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Yvonne Elsworth, Louise Harra

     
  • 18th-century German writers (3)

  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Moses Mendelssohn

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of Moses Mendelssohn, one of the greatest thinkers of the German Enlightenment.

    22 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christopher Clark, Abigail Green, Adam Sutcliffe

     
  • German male essayists (3)

  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • German idealists (3)

  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Philosophy academics (3)

  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Peter Kropotkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest

    24 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon

     
  • 18th-century French women writers (3)

  • Emilie du Châtelet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th-century mathematical genius whose insights into Newton and Leibniz were part of the great advance in science in the Enlightenment.

    4 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, David Wootton, Judith Zinsser

     
  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Olympe de Gouges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and works of the Frenchwoman who wrote The Declaration of the Rights of Woman in 1791 during the French Revolution

    21 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, Sanja Perovic

     
  • 19th-century diarists (3)

  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Polidori's The Vampyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the myths that gave rise to this novella from 1819 by Byron's physician, John Polidori, and the works such as Bram Stoker's Dracula it inspired.

    07 April 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nick Groom, Samantha George, Martyn Rady

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Social concepts (3)

  • Charisma

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how Weber drew on the idea of charisma in religion to explain why people follow some leaders loyally rather than dutifully, for better or worse

    17 March 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tom F. Wright, Linda Woodhead, David A. Bell

     
  • Freedom

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what it is to be free, how freedom became such a powerful value and whether there is such a thing as natural freedom or if it is always culturally defined.

    4 July 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Keane, Bernard Williams, Annabel Brett

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • Religious terminology (3)

  • Charisma

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how Weber drew on the idea of charisma in religion to explain why people follow some leaders loyally rather than dutifully, for better or worse

    17 March 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tom F. Wright, Linda Woodhead, David A. Bell

     
  • Miracles

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of miracles, the subject of fierce theological debate, intense popular piety and serious medical study.

    25 September 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, Janet Soskice, Justin Champion

     
  • Redemption

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Redemption, crucial for Judeo-Christian thought but can it retain its value in a world without God?

    13 March 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Harries, Janet Soskice, Stephen Mulhall

     
  • Sanskrit texts (3)

  • Arthashastra

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Indian Sanskrit text the Arthashastra.

    3 March 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jessica Frazier, James Hegarty, Deven Patel

     
  • The Bhagavad Gita

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the contents and influence of the Bhagavad Gita, one of the most revered texts of Hinduism.

    31 March 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Julius J. Lipner, Jessica Frazier

     
  • The Upanishads

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Upanishads, the sacred texts of Hinduism. Dating from about 700 BC, their mystical and philosophical nature still resonates today.

    8 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jessica Frazier, Chakravarthi Ram-Prasad, Simon Brodbeck

     
  • Anarchist writers (3)

  • Peter Kropotkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest

    24 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • Russian atheists (3)

  • Chekhov

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov.

    14 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Kelly, Cynthia Marsh, Rosamund Bartlett

     
  • Lenin

    Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.

    16 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev

     
  • Peter Kropotkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the Russian prince who became an anarchist and who argued that mutual aid was the key to evolution not survival of the fittest

    24 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ruth Kinna, Lee Dugatkin, Simon Dixon

     
  • Shakespearean tragedies (3)

  • Hamlet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.

    28 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai

     
  • Macbeth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Shakespeare's tragedy of ambition where Macbeth saves his King from one revolt only to murder and replace him, to fulfil a witches' prophecy.

    1 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Smith, Kiernan Ryan, David Schalkwyk

     
  • Romeo and Juliet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud

    17 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith

     
  • Plays adapted into radio programs (3)

  • Hamlet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the inspiration for Shakespeare's Hamlet, the play's context and meaning, and why it has fascinated audiences from its first performance.

    28 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Carol Rutter, Sonia Massai

     
  • Romeo and Juliet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry and power of Shakespeare's tragedy of two young lovers in Verona, their families divided by a bitter feud

    17 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Hackett, Paul Prescott, Emma Smith

     
  • The Tempest

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss The Tempest, one of Shakespeare's last and richest plays.

    14 November 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Erin Sullivan, Katherine Duncan-Jones

     
  • 20th-century German non-fiction writers (3)

  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Hitler in History

    Melvyn Bragg examines the debate between various historiographical theories. How do Intentionalist, Structralist and Marxist views of history explain events in Nazi Germany?

    5 October 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Kershaw, Niall Ferguson, Mary Fulbrook

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • German Marxist writers (3)

  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Rosa Luxemburg

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.

    13 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • Jewish socialists (3)

  • Kafka's The Trial

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.

    27 November 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson

     
  • Rosa Luxemburg

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.

    13 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol

     
  • Walter Benjamin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable philosopher and critic whose ideas, developed in the 1930s, became highly influential after his death while escaping the Holocaust.

    10 February 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Esther Leslie, Kevin McLaughlin, Carolin Duttlinger

     
  • 20th-century French women writers (3)

  • Colette

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.

    27 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • Bisexual novelists (3)

  • Colette

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.

    27 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • French bisexual writers (3)

  • Colette

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.

    27 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack

     
  • George Sand

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand

    6 February 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • French LGBT novelists (3)

  • Colette

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.

    27 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • Philosophical pessimists (3)

  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Thomas Hardy's Poetry

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hardy's poems, which he prized far above the novels which made him famous and rich, and his ambition to be ranked alongside Shelley and Byron.

    13 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Jane Thomas, Tim Armstrong

     
  • Ancient Syria (3)

  • The Hittites

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the empire based in the Land of Hatti during the Late Bronze Age, in modern Turkey, and the discoveries there over the last century.

    23 December 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Claudia Glatz, Ilgi Gercek, Christoph Bachhuber

     
  • The Phoenicians

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Phoenicians, the celebrated maritime traders of the ancient Mediterranean.

    6 February 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Woolmer, Josephine Quinn, Cyprian Broodbank

     
  • The Sassanid Empire

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Sassanian Empire, a grand imperial rival to the Roman Empire.

    13 December 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh N. Kennedy, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, James Howard-Johnston

     
  • Ancient Near East (3)

  • The Bronze Age Collapse

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bronze Age collapse, the term used to describe what many perceive as sudden, chaotic change around 1200 BC, mainly in the eastern Mediterranean.

    16 June 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Linda Hulin, Simon Stoddart

     
  • The Hittites

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the empire based in the Land of Hatti during the Late Bronze Age, in modern Turkey, and the discoveries there over the last century.

    23 December 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Claudia Glatz, Ilgi Gercek, Christoph Bachhuber

     
  • The Phoenicians

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Phoenicians, the celebrated maritime traders of the ancient Mediterranean.

    6 February 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Woolmer, Josephine Quinn, Cyprian Broodbank

     
  • History of the Mediterranean (3)

  • The Arab Conquests

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Arab conquests which transformed the Middle East, Persia, North Africa and Southern Europe by helping to spread the new religion of Islam.

    26 June 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh N. Kennedy, Amira Bennison, Robert Hoyland

     
  • The Hittites

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the empire based in the Land of Hatti during the Late Bronze Age, in modern Turkey, and the discoveries there over the last century.

    23 December 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Claudia Glatz, Ilgi Gercek, Christoph Bachhuber

     
  • The Phoenicians

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Phoenicians, the celebrated maritime traders of the ancient Mediterranean.

    6 February 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Woolmer, Josephine Quinn, Cyprian Broodbank

     
  • Ancient Athenian philosophers (3)

  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Socrates

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.

    27 September 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett

     
  • Xenophon

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.

    26 May 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill

     
  • Ancient Greek metaphysicians (3)

  • Heraclitus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.

    8 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Pythagoras

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.

    10 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor

     
  • Ancient Greek physicists (3)

  • Archimedes

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek mathematician Archimedes, brilliant with numbers and unexpectedly good at defensive siege warfare.

    25 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jackie Stedall, Serafina Cuomo, George Phillips

     
  • Heraclitus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.

    8 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Attic Greek writers (3)

  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Thucydides

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and his work entitled The History of the Peloponnesian War.

    29 January 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Katherine Harloe, Neville Morley

     
  • Xenophon

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.

    26 May 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill

     
  • Idealists (3)

  • Bishop Berkeley

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.

    20 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • 19th-century literature (3)

  • The Decadent Movement

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influence of Baudelaire and Walter Pater on writers and artists in Britain in the 1890s, pursuing art for its own sake and not with moral aims.

    18 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Neil Sammells, Kate Hext, Alex Murray

     
  • The Romantics

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the ideals and legacy of Romanticism, a literary and artistic movement at the turn of the 19th century which gave rise to the great poetry of Wordsworth, Shelley and Keats.

    12 October 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Rosemary Ashton, Nicholas Roe

     
  • Victorian Realism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Victorian realism and its focus on the ordinariness of life which contained a complexity and depth previously unseen.

    14 November 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Philip Davis, A. N. Wilson, Dinah Birch

     
  • Modern art (3)

  • Modernist Utopias

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the mad, bad world of modern utopias where babies are hatched from test tubes, where women live without men, where machines have taken over, and where the poor are exterminated.

    10 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Steven Connor, Laura Marcus

     
  • The Avant Garde's Decline and Fall in the 20th Century

    Melvyn Bragg examines the social and aesthetic impact of the Avant Garde and discusses whether it has failed in making painting relevant in the 20th century.

    25 February 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Eric Hobsbawm, Frances Morris

     
  • The Decadent Movement

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influence of Baudelaire and Walter Pater on writers and artists in Britain in the 1890s, pursuing art for its own sake and not with moral aims.

    18 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Neil Sammells, Kate Hext, Alex Murray

     
  • 18th-century German composers (3)

  • Frederick the Great

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.

    2 July 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup

     
  • Ludwig van Beethoven

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise of Beethoven, from Bonn to Vienna, where he became one of the great composers, despite his growing deafness.

    21 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Tunbridge, John Deathridge, Erica Buurman

     
  • William and Caroline Herschel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.

    11 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett

     
  • German classical composers (3)

  • Frederick the Great

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.

    2 July 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup

     
  • Hildegard of Bingen

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.

    26 June 2014

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    Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum

     
  • William and Caroline Herschel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pioneering brother and sister who, between them, discovered Uranus, comets, double stars and infrared light at the end of the 18th century.

    11 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Carolin Crawford, Jim Bennett

     
  • James Tait Black Memorial Prize recipients (3)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

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    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Iris Murdoch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growing prominence of the philosophy of one of the most celebrated novelists of the 20th century, who developed her ideas in response to WWII.

    21 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anil Gomes, Anne Rowe, Miles Leeson

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Former countries in Europe (3)

  • Byzantium

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the culture, history and legacy of the eastern Byzantine Empire, and examines why it has so often been sidelined and undermined by historians.

    19 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Charlotte Roueché, John Julius Norwich, Liz James

     
  • Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rise and fall of the largest republic in Europe, which for centuries elected its kings to rule alongside parliament and avoided religious wars.

    14 October 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert I. Frost, Katarzyna Kosior, Norman Davies

     
  • The Roman Republic

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the rise and eventual downfall of the Roman Republic which survived for 500 years.

    30 December 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Greg Woolf, Catherine Steel, Tom Holland

     
  • Works published under a pseudonym (3)

  • Jane Eyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

    18 June 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons

     
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.

    30 September 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen

     
  • Wuthering Heights

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.

    28 September 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis

     
  • Epistolary novels (3)

  • Epistolary Literature

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 18th Century fashion for epistolary literature including Aphra Benn, Samuel Richardson and Jane Austen.

    15 March 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Karen O'Brien, Brean Hammond

     
  • Frankenstein

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge

    16 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas

     
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.

    30 September 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen

     
  • Novels set in the 1820s (3)

  • Eugene Onegin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin (1799-1837), often described as his masterpiece, which tells the tragic story of Onegin, Lensky and Tatyana.

    22 June 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Kahn, Emily Finer, Simon Dixon

     
  • Middlemarch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's Study of Provincial Life, set before the Reform Act 1832 in a small, fictional town in the Midlands surrounded by farmland.

    18 April 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Kathryn Hughes, John Bowen

     
  • The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Anne Bronte's story of the mysterious Helen Graham who seeks a new independent life as an artist after escaping her abusive, alcoholic husband.

    30 September 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Alexandra Lewis, Marianne Thormählen, John Bowen

     
  • 5th-century BC historians (3)

  • Confucius

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosophy of Confucius, a body of ideas which, more than any other philosophy, has defined what it is to be Chinese.

    1 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Tao Tao Liu

     
  • Herodotus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer whose Histories aimed to 'preserve the great and marvellous deeds of Greeks and barbarians, especially why they fought each other'.

    23 September 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tom Harrison, Esther Eidinow, Paul Cartledge

     
  • Thucydides

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and his work entitled The History of the Peloponnesian War.

    29 January 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Katherine Harloe, Neville Morley

     
  • Classical-era Greek historians (3)

  • Herodotus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Greek writer whose Histories aimed to 'preserve the great and marvellous deeds of Greeks and barbarians, especially why they fought each other'.

    23 September 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tom Harrison, Esther Eidinow, Paul Cartledge

     
  • Thucydides

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and his work entitled The History of the Peloponnesian War.

    29 January 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Katherine Harloe, Neville Morley

     
  • Xenophon

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.

    26 May 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill

     
  • 18th-century English non-fiction writers (3)

  • Edward Gibbon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.

    17 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien

     
  • Mary Astell

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".

    5 November 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan

     
  • Pope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.

    9 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold

     
  • British social reformers (3)

  • Booth's Life and Labour Survey

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Charles Booth's ambitious project to discover how many people in late Victorian London were living in poverty, and understand why

    10 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emma Griffin, Sarah Wise, Lawrence Goldman

     
  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Octavia Hill

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.

    7 April 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley

     
  • German nationalists (3)

  • Bismarck

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the original Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, one of 19th Century Europe’s most influential statesmen and the founder of modern Germany.

    22 March 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard J Evans, Christopher Clark, Katharine Lerman

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • German philosophers (3)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Humor researchers (3)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.

    26 November 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson

     
  • Kant's Copernican Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Kant's ideas on how the world depends on us, on the limits of human knowledge and why we are bound to ask questions we cannot answer.

    3 June 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Hughes, Anil Gomes, John Callanan

     
  • Picaresque novels (3)

  • Journey to the West

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the much loved Chinese novel from 1592, featuring Monkey, Tripitaka, Sandy and Pigsy, as they travel to India to bring back Buddhist texts.

    20 May 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Julia Lovell, Chiung-yun Evelyn Liu, Craig Clunas

     
  • Tristram Shandy

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.

    24 April 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Hawley, John Mullan, Mary Newbould

     
  • Voltaire's Candide

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's satirical novel Candide, first published in 1759.

    3 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Nicholas Cronk, Caroline Warman

     
  • Pigs in literature (3)

  • Journey to the West

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the much loved Chinese novel from 1592, featuring Monkey, Tripitaka, Sandy and Pigsy, as they travel to India to bring back Buddhist texts.

    20 May 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Julia Lovell, Chiung-yun Evelyn Liu, Craig Clunas

     
  • The Mabinogion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Welsh stories of Arthurian romance and Celtic mythology created in the oral tradition for centuries before being written down in the Middle Ages.

    10 May 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sioned Davies, Helen Fulton, Juliette Wood

     
  • The Odyssey

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Homer’s Odyssey, the epic story of the Greek hero Odysseus’ journey back from Troy, and its foundational position in the history of western literature and ideas.

    9 September 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Edith Hall, Oliver Taplin

     
  • Civil wars in England (3)

  • The Glorious Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg examines the Glorious Revolution of 1688 but were the events of 1688 really either Glorious or Revolutionary?

    19 April 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Spurr, Rosemary Sweet, Scott Mandelbrote

     
  • The Second Barons' War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the vicious war (1264-7) that followed Simon de Montfort's seizure of power from Henry III and his family while supporting new, broader parliaments.

    6 May 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Carpenter, Louise Wilkinson, Sophie Thérèse Ambler

     
  • The Wars of the Roses

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 15th century wars between the royal Houses of Lancaster and York. Do they represent the breakdown of the feudal system or has the political instability been overstated?

    18 May 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Castor, Colin Richmond, Stephen Gunn

     
  • Determinists (3)

  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Pierre-Simon Laplace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication

    8 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • French physicists (3)

  • Emilie du Châtelet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th-century mathematical genius whose insights into Newton and Leibniz were part of the great advance in science in the Enlightenment.

    4 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, David Wootton, Judith Zinsser

     
  • Pascal

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.

    19 September 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi

     
  • Pierre-Simon Laplace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication

    8 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal

     
  • Theoretical physicists (3)

  • Maxwell

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.

    2 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh

     
  • Paul Dirac

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.

    5 March 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman

     
  • Pierre-Simon Laplace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the great French mathematician who tackled questions on the stability of the Solar System and planet rotation and devised the basis for metrication

    8 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Timothy Gowers, Colva Roney-Dougal

     
  • Wars involving Japan (3)

  • The Boxer Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Boxer Rebellion, when the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists purged China of foreign influences in the summer of 1900.

    19 March 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Rana Mitter, R. G. Tiedemann

     
  • The Russo-Japanese War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Japan's unexpected victory over Russia in 1904-5 which gave Japan a new status in the world and pushed Russia into revolution.

    1 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Dixon, Naoko Shimazu, Oleg Benesch

     
  • The Sino-Japanese War

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Second Sino-Japanese War.

    8 May 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rana Mitter, Barak Kushner, Tehyun Ma

     
  • Wars involving the Russian Empire (3)

  • Napoleon's Retreat from Moscow

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why Napoleon invaded Russia in 1812, thought he was victorious yet had to retreat, losing most of his army and, soon after, his empire.

    19 September 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Hartley, Michael Rowe, Michael Rapport

     
  • The Boxer Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Boxer Rebellion, when the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists purged China of foreign influences in the summer of 1900.

    19 March 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Rana Mitter, R. G. Tiedemann

     
  • The Russo-Japanese War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Japan's unexpected victory over Russia in 1904-5 which gave Japan a new status in the world and pushed Russia into revolution.

    1 April 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Dixon, Naoko Shimazu, Oleg Benesch

     
  • 19th-century British economists (3)

  • David Ricardo

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Ricardo's argument that Britain's economy was being held back by the interests of landlords and protectionism, and his call for free trade.

    25 March 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Matthew Watson, Helen Paul, Richard Whatmore

     
  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • John Ruskin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.

    31 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini

     
  • Extinction events (3)

  • The KT Boundary

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the geological KT Boundary that points to a cataclysmic event in the history of the Earth; one that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the rise of the mammals.

    23 June 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Kelley, Jane Francis, Mike Benton

     
  • The Late Devonian Extinction

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the disappearance of up to 70 per cent of species roughly 370 million years ago at the end of The Age of Fishes, and the range of possible causes.

    11 March 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jessica Whiteside, David Bond, Mike Benton

     
  • The Permian-Triassic Boundary

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Permian-Triassic boundary and the greatest mass extinction the world has ever known.

    28 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Corfield, Mike Benton, Jane Francis

     
  • British poems (3)

  • Aurora Leigh

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aurora Leigh, Elizabeth Barrett Browning's novel-poem published in 1856, three years before her death in Florence.

    24 March 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Margaret Reynolds, Daniel Karlin, Karen O'Brien

     
  • Tennyson's In Memoriam

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem In Memoriam.

    30 June 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Seamus Perry, Jane Wright

     
  • The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Coleridge's poem of a grim voyage in which a sailor shoots an albatross and is forced to tell the story of his crime forever.

    4 March 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sir Jonathan Bate, Tom Mole, Rosemary Ashton

     
  • Deified Roman emperors (3)

  • Constantine the Great

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Constantine the Great, the Roman emperor who made Constantinople his capital rather than Rome and who legalised Christianity across the Empire.

    5 October 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christopher Kelly, Lucy Grig, Greg Woolf

     
  • Marcus Aurelius

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.

    25 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards

     
  • The Augustan Age

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.

    11 June 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy

     
  • Philosophers of Roman Italy (3)

  • Cicero

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.

    25 January 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena

     
  • Marcus Aurelius

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.

    25 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards

     
  • Pliny's Natural History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pliny the Elder's Natural History, a comprehensive and influential encyclopedia of the natural sciences written in the first century AD.

    8 July 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Serafina Cuomo, Aude Doody, Liba Taub

     
  • Roman philhellenes (3)

  • Horace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace, one of the greatest poets of his age, the origin of phrases such as carpe diem, nil desperandum and dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

    15 November 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emily Gowers, William Fitzgerald, Ellen O'Gorman

     
  • Marcus Aurelius

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.

    25 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards

     
  • Nero

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reputation of Nero, popular with his subjects but vilified in his lifetime and after and associated with the Beast in the Book of Revelation.

    25 April 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Maria Wyke, Matthew Nicholls, Shushma Malik

     
  • Roman pharaohs (3)

  • Marcus Aurelius

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, meditations and reputation of this stoic and philosopher king, who Machiavelli called the last of the 'Five Good Emperors'.

    25 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Angie Hobbs, Catharine Edwards

     
  • Nero

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reputation of Nero, popular with his subjects but vilified in his lifetime and after and associated with the Beast in the Book of Revelation.

    25 April 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Maria Wyke, Matthew Nicholls, Shushma Malik

     
  • The Augustan Age

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.

    11 June 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy

     
  • Contributors to the Encyclopédie (1751–1772) (3)

  • Emilie du Châtelet

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 18th-century mathematical genius whose insights into Newton and Leibniz were part of the great advance in science in the Enlightenment.

    4 February 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, David Wootton, Judith Zinsser

     
  • Montesquieu

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of the French political philosopher (1689-1755) whose work on liberty and republicanism, banned at home, influenced the US constitution.

    14 June 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Bourke, Rachel Hammersley, Richard Whatmore

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Northumbrian saints (3)

  • Saint Cuthbert

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life of the Northumbrian monk, priest and hermit who lived on the Holy Island of Lindisfarne and became one of England's most revered saints.

    28 January 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Hawkes, Sarah Foot, John Hines

     
  • St Hilda

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Hilda, who led a large and influential network of monasteries in 7th century Britain.

    5 April 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Blair, Rosemary Cramp, Sarah Foot

     
  • The Venerable Bede

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.

    25 November 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown

     
  • Metafictional novels (3)

  • Don Quixote

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the importance, originality and enduring appeal of Cervantes’ classic 17th century Spanish novel Don Quixote, a cornerstone of Western literature.

    16 March 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Ife, Edwin Williamson, Jane Whetnall

     
  • Great Gatsby

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.

    14 January 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek

     
  • Tristram Shandy

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.

    24 April 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Hawley, John Mullan, Mary Newbould

     
  • Astronomical events (3)

  • Eclipses

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the progress in our understanding of eclipses from the ancient world onwards and how their predictability illuminates historical records and myths.

    31 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolin Crawford, Frank Close, Lucie Green

     
  • The Life of Stars

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life cycle of stars. They are born among vast swirls of gas and dust and they die in stunning explosions.

    27 Mar 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Murdin, Janna Levin, Phil Charles

     
  • The Universe's Origins

    Melvyn Bragg examines the way thinking about the origins of the universe changed in the 20th century. Are we any closer to knowing whether other worlds exist and how our planet came into being?

    20 May 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Paul Davies

     
  • Alumni of Christ Church, Oxford (3)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • John Ruskin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.

    31 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini

     
  • John Wesley and Methodism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world

    10 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson

     
  • English diarists (3)

  • Fanny Burney

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.

    23 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan

     
  • John Wesley and Methodism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world

    10 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • German–English translators (3)

  • Edith Wharton

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Wharton's novels, which explore the world of the privileged in America's Gilded Age, in which she lived, written in hindsight and with little mercy.

    4 October 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hermione Lee, Bridget Bennett, Laura Rattray

     
  • John Wesley and Methodism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world

    10 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Founders of English schools and colleges (3)

  • John Wesley and Methodism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the difference John Wesley made during the Christian Revival of the 18th Century, developing Methodism into a major movement around the world

    10 December 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Plant, Eryn White, William Gibson

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • The Death of Elizabeth I

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the death of Queen Elizabeth I and its immediate impact, as a foreign monarch became King in the face of plots and plague.

    15 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Guy, Clare Jackson, Helen Hackett

     
  • Artist authors (3)

  • Albrecht Dürer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Dürer, the creator of some of the most memorable images in the late Renaissance from his woodcut of a rhinoceros to his stunning self portraits.

    12 November 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Foister, Giulia Bartrum, Ulinka Rublack

     
  • Rabindranath Tagore

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature.

    7 May 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Chandrika Kaul, Bashabi Fraser, John Stevens

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • 18th-century British philosophers (3)

  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Mary Astell

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".

    5 November 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • English women activists (3)

  • Annie Besant

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.

    21 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan

     
  • Mary Astell

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".

    5 November 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan

     
  • Octavia Hill

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.

    7 April 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley

     
  • English women non-fiction writers (3)

  • Margery Kempe and English Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Margery Kempe (1373-1438), the English mystic who went to Jerusalem and dictated her life story, said to be the first autobiography in English.

    2 June 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Bale

     
  • Mary Astell

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".

    5 November 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan

     
  • Octavia Hill

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.

    7 April 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley

     
  • 18th-century pseudonymous writers (3)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Mary Astell

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosopher Mary Astell (1666 – 1731) who has been described as "the first English feminist".

    5 November 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hannah Dawson, Mark Goldie, Teresa Bejan

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • Nobility from Vienna (3)

  • Maria Theresa

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reign of the Empress who upended the European order while strengthening Austria through reforms, alliances and strategic marriages.

    22 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Martyn Rady, Thomas Biskup

     
  • Marie Antoinette

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian princess who, while still a child, married the future Louis XVI of France only to face hostility and death under the French Revolution.

    8 November 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, David McCallam

     
  • Rudolf II

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the coterie of brilliant thinkers gathered by Holy Roman Emperor Rudolph II at his court in Prague.

    31 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Howard Hotson, Adam Mosley

     
  • 18th-century letter writers (3)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Maria Theresa

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reign of the Empress who upended the European order while strengthening Austria through reforms, alliances and strategic marriages.

    22 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Martyn Rady, Thomas Biskup

     
  • 20th-century English mathematicians (3)

  • Alan Turing

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.

    15 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Paul Dirac

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.

    5 March 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman

     
  • 20th-century English philosophers (3)

  • Alan Turing

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.

    15 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges

     
  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • English logicians (3)

  • Alan Turing

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.

    15 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • English people of Irish descent (3)

  • Alan Turing

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.

    15 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges

     
  • Annie Besant

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.

    21 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Castrated people (3)

  • Abelard and Heloise

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.

    5 May 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy

     
  • Alan Turing

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and life of the founder of computer science - whose work helped crack enemy codes in WW2 - and his exploration of artificial intelligence.

    15 October 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Leslie Ann Goldberg, Simon Schaffer, Andrew Hodges

     
  • The Eunuch

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history and significance of eunuchs, castrated men who played important roles in many civilisations.

    26 February 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen Radner, Shaun Tougher, Michael Hoeckelmann

     
  • 5th-century BC Athenians (3)

  • Pericles

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and influence of the most powerful statesman in the new democracy of Athens, flourishing between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.

    17 September 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Paul Cartledge, Peter Liddel

     
  • Socrates

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.

    27 September 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett

     
  • Thucydides

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and his work entitled The History of the Peloponnesian War.

    29 January 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Katherine Harloe, Neville Morley

     
  • Ancient Athenian generals (3)

  • Pericles

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and influence of the most powerful statesman in the new democracy of Athens, flourishing between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.

    17 September 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Paul Cartledge, Peter Liddel

     
  • Thucydides

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and his work entitled The History of the Peloponnesian War.

    29 January 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Katherine Harloe, Neville Morley

     
  • Xenophon

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the ancient Greek historian and soldier Xenophon.

    26 May 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill

     
  • Academic staff of the University of Göttingen (3)

  • Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.

    30 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans

     
  • Emmy Noether

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and achievements of one of the great 20th-century mathematicians.

    24 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Colva Roney-Dougal, David Berman, Elizabeth Mansfield

     
  • Paul Dirac

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bristolian theoretical physicist, ranked alongside Einstein by his peers, who won a Nobel for his work on quantum mechanics.

    5 March 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Graham Farmelo, Valerie Gibson, David Berman

     
  • History of indigenous peoples of the Americas (3)

  • The Inca

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the South American people who dominated from the Andes to the Pacific coast until the arrival of the Spanish Conquistadors.

    13 June 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Meddens, Helen Cowie, Bill Sillar

     
  • The War of 1812

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the War of 1812, the conflict between America and Great Britain which is sometimes referred to as the second American War of Independence.

    31 January 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Lawrence Goldman, Frank Cogliano

     
  • Valladolid Debate

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the influential debate in 1550 over whether it was right or not to enslave the people who lived on Spain's newly conquered land in the Americas.

    20 February 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Caroline Dodds Pennock, John Edwards, Julia McClure

     
  • 19th-century letter writers (3)

  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • George Sand

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand

    6 February 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness

     
  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Christian hagiographers (3)

  • Alcuin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the cleric, educator and poet from York who put learning for its own sake at the heart of the Carolingian Renaissance

    30 January 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Joanna Story, Andy Orchard, Mary Garrison

     
  • Gerald of Wales

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval scholar Gerald of Wales, the author of colourful and influential works about his journeys around Ireland and Wales.

    4 October 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Henrietta Leyser, Michelle Brown, Huw Pryce

     
  • The Venerable Bede

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.

    25 November 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown

     
  • 1st-century BC Romans (3)

  • Catullus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Catullus - some of the greatest verse of his time, and some of the most scurrilous - and his influence on Roman and later poetry

    11 January 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Gail Trimble, Simon Smith, Maria Wyke

     
  • Horace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Horace, one of the greatest poets of his age, the origin of phrases such as carpe diem, nil desperandum and dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

    15 November 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Emily Gowers, William Fitzgerald, Ellen O'Gorman

     
  • Spartacus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of Spartacus, a Roman gladiator who was involved in a series of slave uprisings against the Roman Republic in the 1st century BC.

    6 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Maria Wyke, Theresa Urbainczyk

     
  • Bisexual poets (3)

  • Catullus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poetry of Catullus - some of the greatest verse of his time, and some of the most scurrilous - and his influence on Roman and later poetry

    11 January 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Gail Trimble, Simon Smith, Maria Wyke

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • English literary critics (3)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Johnson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.

    27 October 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley

     
  • William Hazlitt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Jonathan Bate, Uttara Natarajan and AC Grayling discuss the life and works of William Hazlitt.

    8 April 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, A. C. Grayling, Uttara Natarajan

     
  • Formalist poets (3)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • Knights of the Legion of Honour (3)

  • Edith Wharton

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Wharton's novels, which explore the world of the privileged in America's Gilded Age, in which she lived, written in hindsight and with little mercy.

    4 October 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hermione Lee, Bridget Bennett, Laura Rattray

     
  • Lawrence of Arabia

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lawrence of Arabia, the legend and its context, an idea drawn from over 1200 suggested by listeners this autumn

    5 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hussein Omar, Catriona Pennell, Neil Faulkner

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • Translators of Homer (3)

  • Lawrence of Arabia

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Lawrence of Arabia, the legend and its context, an idea drawn from over 1200 suggested by listeners this autumn

    5 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hussein Omar, Catriona Pennell, Neil Faulkner

     
  • Pope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.

    9 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • Calvinist and Reformed poets (3)

  • Emily Dickinson

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Emily Dickinson, the now-celebrated poet of Amherst, who was prolific yet chose to publish few of her poems.

    11 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Fiona Green, Linda Freedman, Paraic Finnerty

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Robert Burns

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Ayrshire farmer whose 'Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect' (1786) set him on the way to a worldwide reputation as one of the great poets.

    24 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Crawford, Fiona Stafford, Murray Pittock

     
  • Autobiographers (3)

  • Al-Ghazali

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, one of the most significant and influential philosophers of the Middle Ages.

    19 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Gleave

     
  • Ibn Khaldun

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.

    4 February 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Hypochondriacs (3)

  • Pascal

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.

    19 September 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Rousseau on Education

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rousseau's ideas on how to educate children so they retain their natural selves and are not corrupted by society.

    10 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Caroline Warman, Denis McManus

     
  • Nobel laureates in Chemistry (3)

  • Dorothy Hodgkin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work, ideas and life of the woman who won the 1964 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work on the structures of vitamin B12 and penicillin.

    3 October 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Georgina Ferry, Judith Howard, Patricia Fara

     
  • Rutherford

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.

    19 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara

     
  • The Curies

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.

    26 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell

     
  • 17th-century Christian mystics (3)

  • George Fox and the Quakers

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the foundation of the Religious Society of Friends, otherwise known as the Quakers, in the 17th century.

    5 April 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Justin Champion, John Coffey, Kate Peters

     
  • Pascal

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.

    19 September 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi

     
  • Sir Thomas Browne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life, ideas and language of Browne (1605-82), a doctor sharing his personal views on science, history and religion at a time of great change

    6 June 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Claire Preston, Jessica Wolfe, Kevin Killeen

     
  • American people of English descent (3)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • President Ulysses S Grant

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Grant's role in rebuilding America in the decade after the Civil War and his impact on African-Americans and Native Americans.

    30 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Erik Mathisen, Susan-Mary Grant, Robert Cook

     
  • Thomas Edison

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.

    9 December 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus

     
  • American slave owners (3)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • President Ulysses S Grant

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Grant's role in rebuilding America in the decade after the Civil War and his impact on African-Americans and Native Americans.

    30 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Erik Mathisen, Susan-Mary Grant, Robert Cook

     
  • Washington and the American Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.

    24 June 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick

     
  • Congressional Gold Medal recipients (3)

  • President Ulysses S Grant

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Grant's role in rebuilding America in the decade after the Civil War and his impact on African-Americans and Native Americans.

    30 May 2019

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    Featuring: Erik Mathisen, Susan-Mary Grant, Robert Cook

     
  • Thomas Edison

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.

    9 December 2010

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    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus

     
  • Washington and the American Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.

    24 June 2004

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    Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick

     
  • Gases (3)

  • Kinetic Theory

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the growth of ideas about gas pressure, from Newton's theory that static particles push against each other to Maxwell and Boltzmann's moving atoms.

    23 May 2019

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    Featuring: Steven Bramwell, Isobel Falconer, Ted Forgan

     
  • Plasma

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss plasma. First observed in 1879, plasma is the most abundant matter in the universe, far more than solid, liquid or gas.

    13 October 2016

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    Featuring: Justin Wark, Kate Lancaster, Bill Graham

     
  • The Vacuum of Space

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Vacuum of Space, from the innards of the atom to the outer reaches of space.

    30 April 2009

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    Featuring: Frank Close, Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Ruth Gregory

     
  • British Gothic novels (3)

  • Frankenstein

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge

    16 May 2019

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    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas

     
  • Jane Eyre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, first published in 1847 under the pseudonym Currer Bell.

    18 June 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Karen O'Brien, Sara Lyons

     
  • Wuthering Heights

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.

    28 September 2017

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    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis

     
  • Novels about revenge (3)

  • Frankenstein

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Mary Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein and the creature he makes from cadavers and then rejects - only for the monster to take his revenge

    16 May 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Michael Rossington, Jane Thomas

     
  • Moby Dick

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, the story of Ahab and the white whale, the most popular of around 1,000 ideas that listeners submitted.

    7 December 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Bridget Bennett, Katie McGettigan, Graham Thompson

     
  • Wuthering Heights

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.

    28 September 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis

     
  • Lycée Condorcet alumni (3)

  • Bergson and Time

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Henri Bergson on how our experience of time as a duration differs from the scientific measurement of time, and why that matters.

    9 May 2019

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    Featuring: Keith Ansell-Pearson, Emily Thomas, Mark Sinclair

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

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    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Religion and politics (3)

  • The Divine Right of Kings

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Divine Right of Kings. The idea that kingly authority derives from God alone bit deep into the culture of 17th century Britain.

    11 October 2007

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    Featuring: Justin Champion, Thomas Healy, Clare Jackson

     
  • The Gordon Riots

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why a Westminster protest against 'Popery' in June 1780 led to widespread rioting across London, lethally suppressed.

    2 May 2019

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    Featuring: Ian Haywood, Catriona Kennedy, Mark Knights

     
  • Toleration

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what had happened in England to make diverse religions ‘tolerable’. What was the philosophy and politics behind the idea of toleration, and does it differ from tolerance?

    20 May 2004

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    Featuring: Justin Champion, David Wootton, Sarah Barber

     
  • Damnatio memoriae (3)

  • Akhenaten

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Elizabeth Frood, Richard Parkinson and Kate Spence discuss Akhenaten, the ruler who brought revolutionary change to ancient Egypt.

    1 October 2009

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    Featuring: Richard Parkinson, Elizabeth Frood, Kate Spence

     
  • Nero

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reputation of Nero, popular with his subjects but vilified in his lifetime and after and associated with the Beast in the Book of Revelation.

    25 April 2019

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    Featuring: Maria Wyke, Matthew Nicholls, Shushma Malik

     
  • Wyclif and the Lollards

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval philosopher and theologian John Wyclif and his followers, the Lollards.

    16 June 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Anne Hudson, Rob Lutton

     
  • Scholars of Trinity College Dublin (3)

  • Bishop Berkeley

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.

    20 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Writers from Dublin (city) (3)

  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Absurdist writers (3)

  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Kafka's The Trial

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.

    27 November 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson

     
  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Irish male novelists (3)

  • Joyce's A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce's groundbreaking 1916 novel about growing up in Catholic Ireland.

    26 November 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Katherine Mullin, Jeri Johnson

     
  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Burials at Montparnasse Cemetery (3)

  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • Catholic theology and doctrine (3)

  • Just War

    Melvyn Bragg examines where the idea of a just war originated and whether after over 100 years of almost unimaginably violent conflict, the term has any meaning at all.

    3 June 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Keane, Niall Ferguson

     
  • Papal Infallibility

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the idea that Popes cannot err when defining a doctrine, in office, proclaimed at the First Vatican Council 1869-70

    10 January 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tom O'Loughlin, Rebecca Rist, Miles Pattenden

     
  • Purgatory

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Purgatory as an idea and, from C12th, as a place imagined alongside Heaven and Hell where souls of sinners would be purged by fire.

    25 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Matthew Treherne, Helen Foxhall Forbes

     
  • Cotton Library (3)

  • Sir Gawain and the Green Knight

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poem of the knight who interrupts King Arthur's Christmas celebrations, challenging someone to chop off his head if he can do the same in return

    13 December 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Ad Putter, Simon Armitage

     
  • The Lindisfarne Gospels

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 8th century manuscripts that united the Celtic and Roman church and cultures in England, and are often seen as the first artworks of Christian Britain.

    20 February 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gameson, Clare Lees, Michelle Brown

     
  • The Magna Carta

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Magna Carta, the charter issued by King John in 1215 that is often seen as the basis of English liberties.

    7 May 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Vincent, David Carpenter, Michael Clanchy

     
  • French queens consort (3)

  • Eleanor of Aquitaine

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Eleanor of Aquitaine (c1122-1204), who was a ruler in her own right as well as married to the king of France and then to the king of England.

    28 January 2016

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    Featuring: Lindy Grant, Nicholas Vincent, Julie Barrau

     
  • Marie Antoinette

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian princess who, while still a child, married the future Louis XVI of France only to face hostility and death under the French Revolution.

    8 November 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, David McCallam

     
  • Mary, Queen of Scots

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, who might have united the French, English and Scottish thrones.

    19 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Forsyth, Anna Groundwater, John Guy

     
  • Royal reburials (3)

  • Frederick the Great

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.

    2 July 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup

     
  • Marie Antoinette

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Austrian princess who, while still a child, married the future Louis XVI of France only to face hostility and death under the French Revolution.

    8 November 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Katherine Astbury, David McCallam

     
  • Napoleon and Wellington

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the comparative histories of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, two titans of nineteenth century history.

    25 October 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Roberts, Mike Broers, Belinda Beaton

     
  • American autobiographers (3)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Edith Wharton

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Wharton's novels, which explore the world of the privileged in America's Gilded Age, in which she lived, written in hindsight and with little mercy.

    4 October 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hermione Lee, Bridget Bennett, Laura Rattray

     
  • Frederick Douglass

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the prominent abolitionist, who in 1845 told his story in Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

    9 February 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Karen Salt, Nicholas Guyatt

     
  • 18th century in technology (3)

  • Automata

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of ideas about machines imitating living creatures, and the questions they raise about the differences between machinery and humanity.

    20 September 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Elly Truitt, Franziska Kohlt

     
  • Consequences of the Industrial Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the far-reaching consequences of the Industrial Revolution, which brought widespread social and intellectual change to Britain.

    30 December 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Humphries, Emma Griffin, Lawrence Goldman

     
  • The Industrial Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Industrial Revolution, a period of rapid technological development which brought widespread social and intellectual change to Britain.

    23 December 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jeremy Black, Pat Hudson, William Ashworth

     
  • Public domain books (3)

  • The Iliad

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the story of a crucial 40 days in the 10-year battle for Troy, framed by Achilles' anger first at his leader Agamenmon and then at his enemy Hector.

    13 September 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Barbara Graziosi, Paul Cartledge

     
  • The Odyssey

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Homer’s Odyssey, the epic story of the Greek hero Odysseus’ journey back from Troy, and its foundational position in the history of western literature and ideas.

    9 September 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goldhill, Edith Hall, Oliver Taplin

     
  • The Riddle of the Sands

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the prescient thriller ‘The Riddle of the Sands’ and the decline Anglo-German relations before the First World War.

    12 June 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard J. Evans, Rosemary Ashton, T. C. W. Blanning

     
  • Botanical illustrators (3)

  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.

    21 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton

     
  • Hokusai

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), whose views of Mt Fuji such as The Great Wave off Kanagawa (pictured) are some of the most iconic in world art.

    30 March 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angus Lockyer, Rosina Buckland, Ellis Tinios

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • Libertarian socialists (3)

  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • Mythopoeic writers (3)

  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • William Morris

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss some of the many aspects of William Morris: his activism, poetry and prose and his ideas on arts, crafts and work in an industrial world.

    5 July 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ingrid Hanson, Marcus Waithe, Jane Thomas

     
  • History of United States expansionism (3)

  • The California Gold Rush

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the California Gold Rush of the 1850s, when a chance discovery of gold led to massive demographic changes to parts of America.

    2 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Jacqueline Fear-Segal, Frank Cogliano

     
  • The Mexican-American War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1846-48 American war against Mexico, in which America won over a million square kilometres of Mexican territory, including California.

    28 June 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Cogliano, Jacqueline Fear-Segal, Thomas Rath

     
  • The War of 1812

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the War of 1812, the conflict between America and Great Britain which is sometimes referred to as the second American War of Independence.

    31 January 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Lawrence Goldman, Frank Cogliano

     
  • Wars involving the United States (3)

  • The Boxer Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Boxer Rebellion, when the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists purged China of foreign influences in the summer of 1900.

    19 March 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Rana Mitter, R. G. Tiedemann

     
  • The Mexican-American War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1846-48 American war against Mexico, in which America won over a million square kilometres of Mexican territory, including California.

    28 June 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frank Cogliano, Jacqueline Fear-Segal, Thomas Rath

     
  • The War of 1812

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the War of 1812, the conflict between America and Great Britain which is sometimes referred to as the second American War of Independence.

    31 January 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Lawrence Goldman, Frank Cogliano

     
  • Perception (3)

  • Echolocation

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss how animals such as bats and dolphins evolved to use high frequency sounds to navigate their environments and find their prey.

    21 June 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kate Jones, Gareth Jones, Dean Waters

     
  • Perception and the Senses

    Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.

    28 April 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert

     
  • Time

    Melvyn Bragg examines the history of mankind’s attempt to understand the nature of time. Does it exist independently of our perception of it, or is it merely a figment of our imagination?

    30 December 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Neil Johnson, Lee Smolin

     
  • Historical transcontinental empires (3)

  • Byzantium

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the culture, history and legacy of the eastern Byzantine Empire, and examines why it has so often been sidelined and undermined by historians.

    19 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Charlotte Roueché, John Julius Norwich, Liz James

     
  • The Almoravid Empire

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Berber people who dominated the western Maghreb and the south of the Iberian Peninsula from C11th, defending Al-Andalus from Christian attack.

    3 May 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Nicola Clarke, Hugh Kennedy

     
  • The British Empire

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the British Empire, what drove Britain to follow the imperial road and what was its legacy?

    8 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Maria Misra, Peter Cain, Catherine Hall

     
  • Former empires in Africa (3)

  • The Almoravid Empire

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Berber people who dominated the western Maghreb and the south of the Iberian Peninsula from C11th, defending Al-Andalus from Christian attack.

    3 May 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Nicola Clarke, Hugh Kennedy

     
  • The Empire of Mali

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the empire of Mali, famous for the wealth of its rulers such as Mansa Musa and the largest empire in west Africa.

    29 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Amira Bennison, Marie Rodet, Kevin MacDonald

     
  • The Rise and Fall of the Zulu Nation

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Saul David, Shula Marks and Saul Dubow discuss the rise and fall of the Zulu Nation.

    15 April 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Saul David, Saul Dubow, Shula Marks

     
  • Novels set in England (3)

  • Emma

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jane Austen's novel Emma, which features, according to Austen, 'a heroine whom no-one but myself will much like'.

    19 November 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Todd, John Mullan, Emma Clery

     
  • Middlemarch

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Eliot's Study of Provincial Life, set before the Reform Act 1832 in a small, fictional town in the Midlands surrounded by farmland.

    18 April 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Kathryn Hughes, John Bowen

     
  • Voltaire's Candide

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Voltaire's satirical novel Candide, first published in 1759.

    3 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Nicholas Cronk, Caroline Warman

     
  • 19th-century British inventors (3)

  • Ada Lovelace

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 19th century mathematician and hard living daughter of Lord Byron, Ada Lovelace.

    6 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Doron Swade, John Fuegi

     
  • Brunel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Victorian engineer responsible for bridges, tunnels and railways still in use today.

    13 November 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Julia Elton, Ben Marsden, Crosbie Smith

     
  • George and Robert Stephenson

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss George Stephenson, known as the Father of Railways, and his son Robert, designer of the Rocket, whose contribution was arguably even greater.

    11 April 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Michael Bailey, Julia Elton, Colin Divall

     
  • French sociologists (3)

  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Tocqueville: Democracy in America

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Alexis de Tocqueville and his study of the American democratic system, written as an example to France of how democracy might develop there.

    22 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Gildea, Susan-Mary Grant, Jeremy Jennings

     
  • Military theorists (3)

  • Clausewitz and On War

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.

    17 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser

     
  • Machiavelli and the Italian City States

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. Inspired by the model of Cesare Borgia, he wrote a notorious manual of power still read today.

    9 December 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, Evelyn Welch, Lisa Jardine

     
  • Sun Tzu and The Art of War

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Chinese military adviser Sun Tzu from the 6th century BC and the influential work of military strategy associated with him, The Art of War.

    1 March 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hilde de Weerdt, Tim Barrett, Imre Galambos

     
  • Latin letter writers (3)

  • Cicero

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.

    25 January 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena

     
  • Pliny the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Roman lawyer and statesman Pliny the Younger, whose letters offer a fascinating insight into his life and the ancient world.

    12 December 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Roy Gibson, Alice König

     
  • Seneca the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.

    23 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro

     
  • Sieges involving the Ottoman Empire (3)

  • Constantinople Siege and Fall

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 1453 siege of Constantinople. A bitter and bloody 53 days that ended a thousand years of the Byzantine Empire.

    28 December 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roger Crowley, Judith Herrin, Colin Imber

     
  • The Siege of Malta, 1565

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fierce contest for Malta, which the Ottomans tried to prise from the Knights Hospitaller who they they had already driven from Rhodes in 1522.

    11 January 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Nicholson, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Kate Fleet

     
  • The Siege of Vienna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1683 siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Army. The ensuing tale of blood and drama helped define the boundaries of Europe.

    14 May 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jeremy Black, Andrew Wheatcroft, Claire Norton

     
  • Ottoman–Spanish conflicts (3)

  • The Battle of Lepanto

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the sea battle of Lepanto, in which the Christian forces of the Holy League defeated the Ottoman fleet of Selim II in 1571.

    12 November 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Kate Fleet, Noel Malcolm

     
  • The Siege of Malta, 1565

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fierce contest for Malta, which the Ottomans tried to prise from the Knights Hospitaller who they they had already driven from Rhodes in 1522.

    11 January 2018

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Helen Nicholson, Diarmaid MacCulloch, Kate Fleet

     
  • The Siege of Vienna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the 1683 siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Army. The ensuing tale of blood and drama helped define the boundaries of Europe.

    14 May 2009

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    Featuring: Jeremy Black, Andrew Wheatcroft, Claire Norton

     
  • Corresponding members of the Saint Petersburg Academy of Sciences (3)

  • Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.

    30 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans

     
  • The Curies

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.

    26 March 2015

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    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • Optical physicists (3)

  • Carl Friedrich Gauss

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Gauss, 'prince of mathematicians', including those on number theory, geometry, probability theory, astronomy and electromagnetism.

    30 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Marcus du Sautoy, Colva Roney-Dougal, Nick Evans

     
  • Maxwell

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.

    2 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • French feminists (3)

  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

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    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

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    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

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    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • City founders (3)

  • Akhenaten

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Elizabeth Frood, Richard Parkinson and Kate Spence discuss Akhenaten, the ruler who brought revolutionary change to ancient Egypt.

    1 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Parkinson, Elizabeth Frood, Kate Spence

     
  • Alexander the Great

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and legacy of Alexander the Great, king of Macedon and conqueror of the Persian Empire.

    1 October 2015

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    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Diana Spencer, Rachel Mairs

     
  • Constantine the Great

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Constantine the Great, the Roman emperor who made Constantinople his capital rather than Rome and who legalised Christianity across the Empire.

    5 October 2017

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    Featuring: Christopher Kelly, Lucy Grig, Greg Woolf

     
  • Nonlinear narrative novels (3)

  • James Joyce's Ulysses

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss James Joyce's celebrated novel Ulysses.

    14 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Connor, Jeri Johnson, Richard Brown

     
  • Tristram Shandy

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Laurence Sterne's comic novel Tristram Shandy.

    24 April 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Hawley, John Mullan, Mary Newbould

     
  • Wuthering Heights

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Emily Bronte's story of Heathcliff and Cathy, of love, hatred, revenge and self-destruction across two generations in a remote moorland home.

    28 September 2017

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    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Bowen, Alexandra Lewis

     
  • Ethical principles (3)

  • Kant's Categorical Imperative

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of Kant's best known ideas: 'Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law'.

    21 September 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Alison Hills, David S. Oderberg, John Callanan

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • Truth

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss philosophical approaches to truth.

    18 December 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Blackburn, Jennifer Hornsby, Crispin Wright

     
  • Political philosophy in ancient Greece (3)

  • Aristotle's Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the most important works of political philosophy ever written - Aristotle’s ‘Politics.

    6 November 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Paul Cartledge, Annabel Brett

     
  • Plato's Republic

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Plato's most famous dialogue which asks 'what is justice', and 'how does justice relate to happiness?'.

    29 June 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, M.M. McCabe, James Warren

     
  • The Oresteia

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the ‘Oresteia’, the first of the Classical tragedies that come out of fifth century Athens. It is a tale of homecoming, murder, bloody vengeance and the establishment of Law.

    29 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edith Hall, Simon Goldhill, Tom Healy

     
  • Grand Cross of the Legion of Honour (3)

  • Bismarck

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the original Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, one of 19th Century Europe’s most influential statesmen and the founder of modern Germany.

    22 March 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard J Evans, Christopher Clark, Katharine Lerman

     
  • Louis Pasteur

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Louis Pasteur, microbiologist, developer of vaccines, saviour of the French beer and wine industries and preserver of milk.

    18 May 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Mendelsohn, Anne Hardy, Michael Worboys

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • 13th-century Latin writers (3)

  • Gerald of Wales

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval scholar Gerald of Wales, the author of colourful and influential works about his journeys around Ireland and Wales.

    4 October 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Henrietta Leyser, Michelle Brown, Huw Pryce

     
  • Roger Bacon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.

    20 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • 13th-century philosophers (3)

  • Maimonides

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work and influence of Maimonides. Widely regarded as the greatest Jewish philosopher of the medieval period.

    17 February 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Joseph Haldane, Sarah Stroumsa, Peter Adamson

     
  • Roger Bacon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss medieval English scholar Roger Bacon, an early pioneer of science who became known as Doctor Mirabilis.

    20 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jack Cunningham, Amanda Power, Elly Truitt

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • European democratic socialists (3)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Rosa Luxemburg

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.

    13 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol

     
  • German revolutionaries (3)

  • Hitler in History

    Melvyn Bragg examines the debate between various historiographical theories. How do Intentionalist, Structralist and Marxist views of history explain events in Nazi Germany?

    5 October 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Kershaw, Niall Ferguson, Mary Fulbrook

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Rosa Luxemburg

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.

    13 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol

     
  • German women philosophers (3)

  • Hannah Arendt

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas of Hannah Arendt who examined totalitarianism and politics and, when covering the Eichmann trial, explored 'the banality of evil'.

    2 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lyndsey Stonebridge, Frisbee Sheffield, Robert Eaglestone

     
  • Hildegard of Bingen

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.

    26 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum

     
  • Rosa Luxemburg

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Rosa Luxemburg, 'Red Rosa', a leading revolutionary and agitator in Poland and Germany until her arrest and murder in the Spartacus Revolt 1919.

    13 April 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Mark Jones, Nadine Rossol

     
  • 1st-century writers (3)

  • Josephus

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Flavius Josephus, author of The Jewish War.

    21 May 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tessa Rajak, Philip Alexander, Martin Goodman

     
  • Seneca the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.

    23 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro

     
  • St Paul

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Helen Bond, John Haldane and John Barclay discuss the influence of St Paul on the early Christian church and on Christian theology generally.

    28 May 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Haldane, John Barclay, Helen Bond

     
  • Suffect consuls of Imperial Rome (3)

  • Pliny the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Roman lawyer and statesman Pliny the Younger, whose letters offer a fascinating insight into his life and the ancient world.

    12 December 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Roy Gibson, Alice König

     
  • Seneca the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Seneca: philosopher, playwright, tutor to Nero, one of the first great writers born in the new Roman empire after the fall of the Republic.

    23 February 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Alessandro Schiesaro

     
  • Tacitus and the Decadence of Rome

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman historian Tacitus, whose portrayal of Roman decadence influences the way we see Rome today.

    10 July 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Ellen O'Gorman, Maria Wyke

     
  • People from the Province of Saxony (3)

  • Bismarck

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the original Iron Chancellor, Otto Von Bismarck, one of 19th Century Europe’s most influential statesmen and the founder of modern Germany.

    22 March 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard J Evans, Christopher Clark, Katharine Lerman

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • 19th-century German novelists (3)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • Philosophers of time (3)

  • Heraclitus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.

    8 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morality

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Nietzsche's influential ideas about what it means to be moral.

    12 January 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Mulhall, Fiona Hughes, Keith Ansell-Pearson

     
  • 19th-century British philosophers (3)

  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • John Ruskin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of John Ruskin, art and social critic, and one of the most influential figures of the Victorian era.

    31 March 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Keith Hanley, Stefan Collini

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • British women essayists (3)

  • Fanny Burney

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.

    23 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan

     
  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • English suffragists (3)

  • Annie Besant

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.

    21 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan

     
  • Harriet Martineau

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who wrote extensively in the C19th on a wide range of subjects including abolition, and is called the mother of sociology.

    8 December 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Valerie Sanders, Karen O'Brien, Ella Dzelzainis

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Renaissance (3)

  • Renaissance Magic

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Renaissance obsession with Magic, including the serious and religious study of the 'hermetic texts' and the cabbala.

    17 June 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Valery Rees, Jonathan Sawday

     
  • The 12th Century Renaissance

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the origins and impact of the philosophical, scientific, religious and architectural changes of the 12th century in western Europe.

    20 October 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Elisabeth van Houts, Giles Gasper

     
  • The Renaissance

    Melvyn Bragg explores the veracity of modern claims about the Renaissance and whether our current perceptions about its role in cultural history stem from a 19th century historian.

    8 June 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Francis Ames-Lewis, Peter Burke, Evelyn Welch

     
  • History of science by discipline (3)

  • History of logic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of logic, the study of reasoning and argument.

    21 October 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Peter Millican, Rosanna Keefe

     
  • Renaissance Maths

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Renaissance Mathematics and the change in the understanding of numbers, movement, time and even nature itself, culminating in the calculus of Isaac Newton and Gottfried Leibniz.

    2 June 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert D. Kaplan, Jim Bennett, Jackie Stedall

     
  • The Invention of Photography

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the development and impact of photography in the 1830s, with heliographs, sun pictures, photogenic drawing, Daguerre and Fox Talbot.

    7 July 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Elizabeth Edwards, Alison Morrison-Low

     
  • Sovereignty (3)

  • Sovereignty

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of the idea of sovereignty, from ancient Greece and Rome to wars in France in the 1500s, to Thomas Hobbes and the revolutionary era.

    30 June 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Richard Bourke, Tim Stanton

     
  • The Divine Right of Kings

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Divine Right of Kings. The idea that kingly authority derives from God alone bit deep into the culture of 17th century Britain.

    11 October 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Justin Champion, Thomas Healy, Clare Jackson

     
  • The Social Contract

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Social Contract. A key idea in political philosophy, it states that political authority is held through a contract with those to be ruled.

    7 February 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Susan James, Karen O'Brien

     
  • Roman Catholic mystics (3)

  • Hildegard of Bingen

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.

    26 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum

     
  • Margery Kempe and English Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Margery Kempe (1373-1438), the English mystic who went to Jerusalem and dictated her life story, said to be the first autobiography in English.

    2 June 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Bale

     
  • Pascal

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.

    19 September 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi

     
  • English Roman Catholics (3)

  • Margery Kempe and English Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Margery Kempe (1373-1438), the English mystic who went to Jerusalem and dictated her life story, said to be the first autobiography in English.

    2 June 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, Katherine Lewis, Anthony Bale

     
  • Pope

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the satirist Alexander Pope. One of the greatest poets of the English language, his brilliant satires have made him popular in our age but not in his own.

    9 November 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Valerie Rumbold

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Events that forced the climate (3)

  • 1816, the Year Without a Summer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the link between the eruption of Mt Tambora in 1815, the largest and most lethal in recorded history, with famines in Europe and America in 1816.

    21 April 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Clive Oppenheimer, Jane Stabler, Lawrence Goldman

     
  • The KT Boundary

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the geological KT Boundary that points to a cataclysmic event in the history of the Earth; one that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs and the rise of the mammals.

    23 June 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Kelley, Jane Francis, Mike Benton

     
  • The Permian-Triassic Boundary

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Permian-Triassic boundary and the greatest mass extinction the world has ever known.

    28 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Corfield, Mike Benton, Jane Francis

     
  • Julii Caesares (3)

  • Agrippina the Younger

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Roman empress Agrippina the Younger, one of the most notorious and influential of the Roman empresses in the 1st century AD.

    31 March 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catharine Edwards, Alice König, Matthew Nicholls

     
  • Julius Caesar

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and reputation of Julius Caesar, one of the most intriguing figures of Roman history.

    2 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christopher Pelling, Catherine Steel, Maria Wyke

     
  • The Augustan Age

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.

    11 June 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy

     
  • Organisations based in London with royal patronage (3)

  • Bedlam

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the early years of Europe's oldest psychiatric hospital, which opened as St Mary of Bethlehem outside Bishopsgate and soon became known as Bedlam.

    17 March 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hilary Marland, Justin Champion, Jonathan Andrews

     
  • The History of the Royal Society

    4–7 January 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • The Royal Society

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how the formation of the Royal Society heralded the dawning of a new scientific era in the 17th century.

    23 March 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Pumfrey, Lisa Jardine, Michael Hunter

     
  • 2nd-millennium BC establishments (3)

  • Babylon

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the truth behind Babylon, the world’s oldest and most enigmatic of empires; from the the Tower of Babel and the Hanging Gardens to the Whore of Babylon.

    3 June 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Eleanor Robson, Irving Finkel, Andrew George

     
  • The Dawn of the Iron Age

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the dawn of the European Iron Age, a period of great upheaval when technology and societies were changed forever.

    24 March 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Cunliffe, Sue Hamilton, Timothy Champion

     
  • The Maya Civilization

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Maya civilization in central America, from consolidation of power in the great cities after AD250 to their abandonment by the 16th century.

    10 March 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Elizabeth Graham, Matthew Restall, Benjamin Vis

     
  • Chartered companies (3)

  • The Dutch East India Company

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Dutch East India Company, which dominated the Asian spice trade in the 17th century and is sometimes called the first multinational corporation.

    3 March 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anne Goldgar, Chris Nierstrasz, Helen Paul

     
  • The East India Company

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the powerful private trading company that redrew the map of India, built an empire and reinvented the fashions and the foodstuffs of Britain.

    26 June 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Huw Bowen, Linda Colley, Maria Misra

     
  • The South Sea Bubble

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the South Sea Bubble, the speculation mania in early 18th-century England which ended in the financial ruin of many of its investors.

    20 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anne Murphy, Helen Paul, Roey Sweet

     
  • 18th-century English people (3)

  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Voyages of James Cook

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the science behind Capt James Cook's three voyages of discovery, from 1768 to 1779, one of over a thousand ideas suggested by listeners.

    3 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Rebekah Higgitt, Sophie Forgan

     
  • Wilberforce

    In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.

    22 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • American abolitionists (3)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • American deists (3)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Thomas Edison

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.

    9 December 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Critics of Judaism (3)

  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Spinoza

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Spinoza whose profound and complex ideas about God had him celebrated as an atheist in the 18th century.

    3 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Sarah Hutton, John Cottingham

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Arthurian characters (3)

  • Merlin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Merlin, prophet, magician, king maker and the original mad man of the woods, distraught at the death of his lord in battle.

    30 June 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliette Wood, Stephen Knight, Peter Forshaw

     
  • The Fisher King

    Melvyn Bragg and guests will be delving into the world of medieval myth and legend in pursuit of the powerful and enigmatic Fisher King.

    17 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Stephen Knight, Juliette Wood

     
  • Tristan and Iseult

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Tristan and Iseult, as told by Thomas of Britain and Beroul in the 12th century and reworked by Gottfried of Strasbourg and others, including Wagner.

    31 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Laura Ashe, Juliette Wood, Mark Chinca

     
  • Experimental physicists (3)

  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Rutherford

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.

    19 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara

     
  • The Curies

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.

    26 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell

     
  • Burials at Highgate Cemetery (3)

  • Christina Rossetti

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Victorian poet Christina Rossetti.

    1 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Rhian Williams, Nicholas Shrimpton

     
  • Marx

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Karl Marx who once said that while other philosophers wanted to interpret the world, he wanted to change it. And he changed the world with his Communist Manifesto.

    14 July 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Francis Wheen, Gareth Stedman Jones

     
  • Michael Faraday

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Michael Faraday, the most famous British scientist of the 19th century.

    25 December 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Geoffrey Cantor, Laura Herz, Frank James

     
  • Unsolved problems in computer science (3)

  • Artificial Intelligence

    Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.

    8 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander

     
  • Artificial Intelligence

    Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.

    8 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander

     
  • P v NP

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss P versus NP, an unsolved problem in maths that asks if the answers to all problems can be found as easily as they can be checked.

    5 November 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Colva Roney-Dougal, Timothy Gowers, Leslie Ann Goldberg

     
  • Feminist philosophers (3)

  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • French communists (3)

  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • Jerusalem Prize recipients (3)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Simone de Beauvoir

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Simone de Beauvoir - her work on existentialist ethics, philosophy and literature and her influence on feminism.

    22 October 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Christina Howells, Margaret Atack, Ursula Tidd

     
  • German Freemasons (3)

  • Frederick the Great

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Frederick II, king of Prussia from 1740 to 1786.

    2 July 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Katrin Kohl, Thomas Biskup

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Astrobiology (3)

  • Extra Terrestrials

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether there are reasons to suppose that some form of life might exist beyond, or even within, our solar system and what our chances of ever discovering such a planet are.

    4 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Goodwin, Heather Couper, Ian Stewart

     
  • Extremophiles

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss extremophiles, the organisms thriving in very harsh conditions on Earth and providing clues to life forms on other planets.

    25 June 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Monica Grady, Ian Crawford, Nick Lane

     
  • The Origins of Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how the world’s first organic matter originated, nearly four billion years ago. What is the single common ancestor from which all living matter on our planet derives?

    23 September 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Dawkins, Richard Corfield, Linda Partridge

     
  • Classical liberalism (3)

  • The Physiocrats

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Physiocrats, an important group of economic thinkers in 18th-century France.

    20 June 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Joel Felix, Helen Paul

     
  • Utilitarianism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss utilitarianism, a moral theory that assesses acts by their tendency to increase pleasure in the world and decrease the amount of pain.

    11 June 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Brad Hooker

     
  • Wealth of Nations

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Adam Smith's celebrated economic treatise The Wealth of Nations.

    19 February 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Whatmore, Donald Winch, Helen Paul

     
  • Knights Bachelor (3)

  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Rabindranath Tagore

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, winner of the 1913 Nobel Prize for Literature.

    7 May 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Chandrika Kaul, Bashabi Fraser, John Stevens

     
  • Rutherford

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.

    19 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara

     
  • 18th-century English novelists (3)

  • Fanny Burney

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.

    23 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan

     
  • Mary Wollstonecraft

    Melvyn Bragg and guests John Mullan, Karen O'Brien and Barbara Taylor discuss the life and ideas of the pioneering British Enlightenment thinker Mary Wollstonecraft.

    31 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, John Mullan, Barbara Taylor

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • Streathamites (3)

  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Fanny Burney

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century writer Fanny Burney, also known as Frances D'Arblay and Frances Burney, best known for her novel Evelina.

    23 April 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicole Pohl, Judith Hawley, John Mullan

     
  • Johnson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Samuel Johnson, a giant of 18th century literature, language and letters, and perhaps the most quotable Englishman to have ever lifted a pen.

    27 October 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Jim McLaverty, Judith Hawley

     
  • Discoverers of chemical elements (3)

  • Robert Boyle

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.

    12 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos

     
  • Rutherford

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.

    19 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara

     
  • The Curies

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.

    26 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell

     
  • Asharis (3)

  • Al-Biruni

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Central Asian polymath al-Biruni and his 11th-century book India, one of the first scholarly works about the country.

    10 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: James Montgomery, Hugh Kennedy, Amira Bennison

     
  • Al-Ghazali

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Islamic scholar Al-Ghazali, one of the most significant and influential philosophers of the Middle Ages.

    19 March 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Carole Hillenbrand, Robert Gleave

     
  • Ibn Khaldun

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.

    4 February 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Hoyland, Robert Graham Irwin, Hugh N. Kennedy

     
  • Phenomenology (3)

  • Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?

    25 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose

     
  • Phenomenology

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical movement phenomenology.

    22 January 2015

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Glendinning, Joanna Hodge, Stephen Mulhall

     
  • The Brain and Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.

    19 November 1998

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson

     
  • 20th-century deaths from tuberculosis (3)

  • Chekhov

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov.

    14 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Kelly, Cynthia Marsh, Rosamund Bartlett

     
  • Kafka's The Trial

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.

    27 November 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Weird fiction writers (3)

  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Kafka's The Trial

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Franz Kafka's novel The Trial.

    27 November 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Elizabeth Boa, Steve Connor, Ritchie Robertson

     
  • Rudyard Kipling

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Rudyard Kipling, a writer sometimes described as the poet of empire.

    16 October 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Howard Booth, Daniel Karlin, Jan Montefiore

     
  • Lycée Henri-IV alumni (3)

  • Brunel

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the Victorian engineer responsible for bridges, tunnels and railways still in use today.

    13 November 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Julia Elton, Ben Marsden, Crosbie Smith

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • 12th-century Latin writers (3)

  • Abelard and Heloise

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of Abelard and Heloise, a medieval tale of literature and philosophy, love and scandal in the high Middle Ages.

    5 May 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Henrietta Leyser, Michael Clanchy

     
  • Gerald of Wales

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval scholar Gerald of Wales, the author of colourful and influential works about his journeys around Ireland and Wales.

    4 October 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Henrietta Leyser, Michelle Brown, Huw Pryce

     
  • Hildegard of Bingen

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.

    26 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum

     
  • Doctors of the Church (3)

  • Hildegard of Bingen

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval mystic, composer and writer Hildegard of Bingen.

    26 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Miri Rubin, William Flynn, Almut Suerbaum

     
  • St Thomas Aquinas

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss St Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church's foremost western philosopher and theologian.

    17 September 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, John Haldane, Annabel Brett

     
  • The Venerable Bede

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Venerable Bede, who revolutionised history and scholarship, and became adopted by Rome as the last of the founding fathers of Christian religion.

    25 November 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, Michelle Brown

     
  • 17th-century Anglo-Irish people (3)

  • Bishop Berkeley

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.

    20 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi

     
  • Robert Boyle

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.

    12 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • 17th-century English philosophers (3)

  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Robert Boyle

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Robert Boyle, a pioneering scientist and one of the first Fellows of the Royal Society.

    12 June 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Michael Hunter, Anna Marie Roos

     
  • Roman-era geographers (3)

  • Pliny's Natural History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Pliny the Elder's Natural History, a comprehensive and influential encyclopedia of the natural sciences written in the first century AD.

    8 July 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Serafina Cuomo, Aude Doody, Liba Taub

     
  • Ptolemy and Ancient Astronomy

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the last of the great Greek astronomers of antiquity, Ptolemy, and his influence on ancient and medieval astronomy.

    17 November 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Liba Taub, Jim Bennett, Charles Burnett

     
  • Strabo's Geographica

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Strabo's Geographica, the only surviving work from the ancient world that describes the entire world known to the Greeks and Romans.

    10 April 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Cartledge, Maria Pretzler, Benet Salway

     
  • Continental philosophers (3)

  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Weber's The Protestant Ethic

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Max Weber's book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.

    27 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Ghosh, Sam Whimster, Linda Woodhead

     
  • Anglican philosophers (3)

  • Bishop Berkeley

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.

    20 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Milton

    Melvyn Bragg examines the literary and political career of the 17th century poet John Milton, examining work such as Paradise Lost as well as his role as propagandist during the English Civil War.

    7 March 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Carey, Lisa Jardine, Blair Worden

     
  • Trinitarianism (3)

  • Calvinism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Justin Champion, Susan Hardman Moore and Diarmaid MacCulloch explore the ideas of John Calvin and their impact.

    25 February 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Justin Champion, Susan Hardman Moore, Diarmaid MacCulloch

     
  • The Nicene Creed

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nicene Creed, a statement of essential faith that established the Divinity of Christ and has been spoken for over 1600 years in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Churches

    27 December 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, Caroline Humfress, Andrew Louth

     
  • The Trinity

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the doctrine of the Trinity, the idea of a threefold God, which lies at the heart of Christianity.

    13 March 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Soskice, Martin Palmer, The Reverend Graham Ward

     
  • Conservatism (3)

  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Social Darwinism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Social Darwinism, a school of thought which attempted to apply Darwin's ideas about evolution to human society.

    20 February 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Gregory Radick, Charlotte Sleigh

     
  • Theories of history (3)

  • Malthusianism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Malthusianism, the influential theory of population growth first articulated by the Reverend Thomas Malthus in 1798.

    23 June 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Mark Philp, Emma Griffin

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • Social Darwinism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Social Darwinism, a school of thought which attempted to apply Darwin's ideas about evolution to human society.

    20 February 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Gregory Radick, Charlotte Sleigh

     
  • History of Earth science (3)

  • Ageing the Earth

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Age of the Earth, and how to make sense of four and half billions years of time.

    20 November 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Corfield, Hazel Rymer, Henry Gee

     
  • Catastrophism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Catastrophism, the idea that the geological record was shaped by a series of natural disasters early in the Earth's history.

    30 January 2014

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Scott, Jan Zalasiewicz, Leucha Veneer

     
  • Early Geology

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the emergence of geology as a scientific discipline.

    12 April 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Pumfrey, Andrew Scott, Leucha Veneer

     
  • Complex systems theory (3)

  • Chaos Theory

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Chaos Theory has affected our understanding of the universe and whether there might be an inherent order behind the fluctuations of the stock market or the British weather.

    16 May 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Greenfield, David Papineau, Neil Johnson

     
  • Complexity

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the science of complex systems, and its importance to understanding the world around us.

    19 December 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Jeff Johnson, Eve Mitleton-Kelly

     
  • The Unintended Consequences of Mathematics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests explore the unintended consequences of mathematical discoveries, from alternating current to predicting the path of asteroids.

    11 February 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John D. Barrow, Colva Roney-Dougal, Marcus du Sautoy

     
  • Imperialism (3)

  • Cultural Imperialism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the idea that a dominating power such as ancient Greece, Persia, Rome, Islam, Britain and now America can exert a cultural and imitative influence.

    27 June 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Linda Colley, Phillip Dodd, Mary Beard

     
  • The Berlin Conference

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Berlin Conference, the international summit which formalised European colonial activity in Africa.

    31 October 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Drayton, Richard Rathbone, Joanna Lewis

     
  • The British Empire

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the British Empire, what drove Britain to follow the imperial road and what was its legacy?

    8 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Maria Misra, Peter Cain, Catherine Hall

     
  • History of the Church of England (3)

  • The Book of Common Prayer

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Book of Common Prayer, published after the Reformation in order to make church liturgy available in English.

    17 October 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Alexandra Walsham, Martin Palmer

     
  • The Oxford Movement

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Oxford Movement which asserted the Catholic tradition of the Church of England in the 19th century.

    13 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sheridan Gilley, Frances Knight, Simon Skinner

     
  • The Pilgrim Fathers

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Pilgrim Fathers and why their 1620 voyage on the Mayflower has become iconic in the American imagination.

    5 July 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Harry Bennett, Tim Lockley

     
  • English Reformation (3)

  • Foxe's Book of Martyrs

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Foxe's Book of Martyrs, the celebrated sixteenth-century account of the suffering of Christian martyrs.

    18 November 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Justin Champion, Elizabeth Evenden

     
  • The Book of Common Prayer

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Book of Common Prayer, published after the Reformation in order to make church liturgy available in English.

    17 October 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Alexandra Walsham, Martin Palmer

     
  • Wyclif and the Lollards

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the medieval philosopher and theologian John Wyclif and his followers, the Lollards.

    16 June 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Anne Hudson, Rob Lutton

     
  • French Roman Catholic writers (3)

  • Montaigne

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of Michel de Montaigne. Best known for his influential Essays, Montaigne is regarded as the father of modern sceptical thought.

    25 April 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Terence Cave, Felicity Green

     
  • Pascal

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the French polymath Blaise Pascal.

    19 September 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Wootton, Michael Moriarty, Michela Massimi

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Intellectual history (3)

  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Rhetoric

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Rhetoric, the art of speaking which is an expression of inner virtue and also fundamental to ideas about democracy.

    28 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Thomas Healy, Ceri Sullivan

     
  • Philosophers of linguistics (3)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Lévi-Strauss

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss.

    23 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Kuper, Christina Howells, Vincent Debaene

     
  • Gnosticism (3)

  • Catharism

    Melvyn Bragg examines the beliefs of the Cathars, a medieval southern European Christian sect accused of heresy, and explores why they were seen as a threat to the 13th century Catholic Church.

    17 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Malcolm Barber, Miri Rubin, Euan Cameron

     
  • Gnosticism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Gnosticism, a religious sect associated with early Christianity.

    2 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, Caroline Humfress, Alastair Logan

     
  • The Fall

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the idea of original sin and its impact on politics, gender and notions of morality in western culture, examining Augustine, Milton, the Masaccio frescoes and Charles Darwin.

    8 April 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, Griselda Pollock, John Carey

     
  • Western esotericism (3)

  • Gnosticism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Gnosticism, a religious sect associated with early Christianity.

    2 May 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Palmer, Caroline Humfress, Alastair Logan

     
  • Neoplatonism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Neoplatonism, a mystical school of thought founded by the third century philosopher Plotinus.

    19 April 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, Anne Sheppard

     
  • Renaissance Magic

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Renaissance obsession with Magic, including the serious and religious study of the 'hermetic texts' and the cabbala.

    17 June 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Forshaw, Valery Rees, Jonathan Sawday

     
  • English activists (3)

  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.

    21 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton

     
  • Annie Besant

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life of 19th-century writer and campaigner Annie Besant.

    21 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Lawrence Goldman, David Stack, Yasmin Khan

     
  • Octavia Hill

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian reformer Octavia Hill, pioneer of social housing and campaigner for public open spaces.

    7 April 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Dinah Birch, Lawrence Goldman, Gillian Darley

     
  • Georgists (3)

  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.

    21 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton

     
  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • Victorian writers (3)

  • Alfred Russel Wallace

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Victorian pioneer of evolutionary theory Alfred Russel Wallace.

    21 March 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, George Beccaloni, Ted Benton

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • Materialism (3)

  • Epicureanism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss Epicureanism, the system of philosophy based on the teachings of Epicurus and founded in the 4th century BC.

    7 February 2013

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, James Warren

     
  • Materialism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Materialism– the philosophical idea that matter constitutes all that exists.

    24 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Caroline Warman, Anthony O'Hear

     
  • Materialism and the Consumer

    Melvyn Bragg examines the development and future of material culture. Are we hopelessly manipulated by materialism, or has the market developed to better our condition?

    23 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rachel Bowlby, William Gibson

     
  • Alumni of Trinity College, Cambridge (3)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Maxwell

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.

    2 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • British consciousness researchers and theorists (3)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Consequentialists (3)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Machiavelli and the Italian City States

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli. Inspired by the model of Cesare Borgia, he wrote a notorious manual of power still read today.

    9 December 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, Evelyn Welch, Lisa Jardine

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • English political philosophers (3)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Hobbes

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Thomas Hobbes, the great 17th century philosopher who famously said that ungoverned man lived a life that was ‘solitary, poor, brutish and short’.

    1 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Quentin Skinner, David Wootton, Annabel Brett

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • English political writers (3)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge (3)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Rutherford

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.

    19 February 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Linguistic turn (3)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Logical Positivism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.

    2 July 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • Nonviolence advocates (3)

  • Bertrand Russell

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the influential 20th-century British thinker Bertrand Russell, widely regarded as one of the founders of Analytical philosophy.

    6 December 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Mike Beaney, Hilary Greaves

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Tolstoy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and times of the 19th century Russian writer Leo Tolstoy, whose novels such as War and Peace gave expression to the compelling moral and social questions of their day.

    25 April 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. N. Wilson, Catriona Kelly, Sarah Hudspith

     
  • Epistemological theories (3)

  • Logical Positivism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.

    2 July 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel

     
  • Pragmatism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the American philosophy of pragmatism which purported that knowledge is only meaningful when coupled with action.

    17 November 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Miranda Fricker

     
  • Scepticism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of philosophical scepticism.

    5 July 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Melissa Lane, Jill Kraye

     
  • Scientific method (3)

  • Laws of Nature

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the quest to find a single over-arching equation that unites all of physics and examines whether what is true in physics is true in all areas of existence.

    19 October 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Buchanan, Frank Close, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Scepticism

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the history of philosophical scepticism.

    5 July 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Melissa Lane, Jill Kraye

     
  • The Scientific method

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific discovery.

    26 January 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, John Worrall, Michela Massimi

     
  • Alchemists of the medieval Islamic world (3)

  • Al-Biruni

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Central Asian polymath al-Biruni and his 11th-century book India, one of the first scholarly works about the country.

    10 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: James Montgomery, Hugh Kennedy, Amira Bennison

     
  • Al-Kindi

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of Al-Kindi, often described as the first philosopher in the Arabic tradition.

    28 June 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Hugh Kennedy, James Montgomery, Amira Bennison

     
  • Avicenna

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Avicenna, among the most important philosophers in the history of Islam.

    8 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Adamson, Amira Bennison, Nader El-Bizri

     
  • German untitled nobility (3)

  • Clausewitz and On War

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss On War, the 19th-century treatise on the theory of warfare by the Prussian soldier Carl von Clausewitz.

    17 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Saul David, Hew Strachan, Beatrice Heuser

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Artificial intelligence (3)

  • Artificial Intelligence

    Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.

    8 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander

     
  • Artificial Intelligence

    Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.

    8 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander

     
  • Game Theory

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss game theory, the mathematical study of decision-making.

    10 May 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Andrew Colman, Richard Bradley

     
  • Counter-Reformation (3)

  • Erasmus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the Dutch humanist scholar Desiderius Erasmus, one of the most significant figures of the Renaissance.

    9 February 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Eamon Duffy, Jill Kraye

     
  • St Bartholomew's Day Massacre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the infamous St Bartholomew’s Day Massacre in 1572 when the River Seine ran red with Protestant blood.

    27 November 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diarmaid MacCulloch, Mark Greengrass, Penny Roberts

     
  • The Jesuits

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Jesuits and their role in the education, art, politics and mythology of the Counter-Reformation.

    18 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nigel Aston, Simon Ditchfield, Dame Olwen Hufton

     
  • Empiricism (3)

  • Empiricism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the development of the idea formulated by John Locke that all knowledge arises from experience, and looks at its effect on the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution.

    10 June 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Judith Hawley, Murray Pittock, Jonathan Rée

     
  • Logical Positivism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.

    2 July 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel

     
  • The Scientific method

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the Scientific Method, the systematic and analytical approach to scientific discovery.

    26 January 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, John Worrall, Michela Massimi

     
  • Age of Revolution (3)

  • 1848: Year of Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 1848, the year that saw Europe engulfed in revolution. Governments from Paris to Palermo were toppled, but the effects were not to last.

    19 January 2012

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Lucy Riall, Mike Rapport

     
  • Consequences of the Industrial Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the far-reaching consequences of the Industrial Revolution, which brought widespread social and intellectual change to Britain.

    30 December 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jane Humphries, Emma Griffin, Lawrence Goldman

     
  • The Industrial Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Industrial Revolution, a period of rapid technological development which brought widespread social and intellectual change to Britain.

    23 December 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jeremy Black, Pat Hudson, William Ashworth

     
  • 5th-century BC Greek philosophers (3)

  • Heraclitus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.

    8 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren

     
  • Pythagoras

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas and influence of the Greek mathematician Pythagoras and his followers, the Pythagoreans.

    10 December 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Serafina Cuomo, John O'Connor

     
  • Socrates

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.

    27 September 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett

     
  • Criticism of rationalism (3)

  • David Hume

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of David Hume, the philosopher and leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment.

    6 October 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Millican, Helen Beebee, James Harris

     
  • Existentialism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses existentialism, a twentieth century philosophy of everyday life concerned with the individual, and his or her place within the world.

    28 June 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Christina Howells, Simon Critchley

     
  • Sturm und Drang

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the 18th-century German artistic movement known as Sturm und Drang, whose best-known exponents included Goethe and Schiller.

    14 October 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: T. C. W. Blanning, Susanne Kord, Maike Oergel

     
  • Big Bang (3)

  • The Age of the Universe

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss a question which has obsessed cosmologists for millennia: how old is the Universe?

    3 March 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Carolin Crawford, Carlos Frenk

     
  • The Universe's Origins

    Melvyn Bragg examines the way thinking about the origins of the universe changed in the 20th century. Are we any closer to knowing whether other worlds exist and how our planet came into being?

    20 May 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Paul Davies

     
  • The Universe's Shape

    Melvyn Bragg discusses shape, size and topology of the universe and examines theories about its expansion. If it is already infinite, how can it be getting any bigger? And is there really only one?

    7 February 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Rees, Julian Barbour, Janna Levin

     
  • Narratology (3)

  • Aristotle's Poetics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aristotle's Poetics, the first and arguably most influential work of literary theory in history.

    27 January 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Nick Lowe, Stephen Halliwell

     
  • Epistolary Literature

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 18th Century fashion for epistolary literature including Aphra Benn, Samuel Richardson and Jane Austen.

    15 March 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Mullan, Karen O'Brien, Brean Hammond

     
  • Rhetoric

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Rhetoric, the art of speaking which is an expression of inner virtue and also fundamental to ideas about democracy.

    28 October 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Thomas Healy, Ceri Sullivan

     
  • Founding monarchs (3)

  • Athelstan

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reign of King Athelstan, whose military exploits united much of England, Scotland and Wales under one ruler for the first time.

    1 July 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Foot, John Hines, Richard Gameson

     
  • Genghis Khan

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Genghis Khan and the Mongol Empire, one of the largest contiguous empires the world has ever seen.

    1 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Jackson, Naomi Standen, George Lane

     
  • The Augustan Age

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.

    11 June 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy

     
  • British political philosophers (3)

  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Humanities (3)

  • History and Understanding the Past

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether we can ever predict the future by understanding the past. What kind of lessons is it possible for leaders, governments or people to take from history?

    30 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard J. Evans, Eric Hobsbawm

     
  • Roman Satire

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Mary Beard, Denis Feeney and Duncan Kennedy discuss Roman satire.

    22 April 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Denis Feeney, Duncan Kennedy

     
  • Tragedy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the ancient genre of tragedy and examines whether we have a psychological need for it, either as catharsis or Schadenfreude.

    2 December 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: George Steiner, Catherine Belsey

     
  • Theatrical genres (3)

  • Elizabethan Revenge

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss why revenge tragedy was so popular with Elizabethan theatre goers, from Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy to Shakespeare's Hamlet.

    18 June 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Bate, Julie Sanders, Janet Clare

     
  • Roman Satire

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Mary Beard, Denis Feeney and Duncan Kennedy discuss Roman satire.

    22 April 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Denis Feeney, Duncan Kennedy

     
  • Tragedy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of the ancient genre of tragedy and examines whether we have a psychological need for it, either as catharsis or Schadenfreude.

    2 December 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: George Steiner, Catherine Belsey

     
  • Cultural studies (3)

  • Cultural Imperialism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the idea that a dominating power such as ancient Greece, Persia, Rome, Islam, Britain and now America can exert a cultural and imitative influence.

    27 June 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Linda Colley, Phillip Dodd, Mary Beard

     
  • Cultural rights in the 20th Century

    Melvyn Bragg examines the impact of globalisation on human rights. How possible is it to place one set of societal traditions within another and what does that do to the identity of both groups?

    10 December 1998

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Homi Bhabha, John N. Gray

     
  • The Frankfurt School

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Frankfurt School, a group of influential German thinkers who argued that culture keeps people passive.

    14 January 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Esther Leslie, Raymond Geuss

     
  • 1660 establishments in England (3)

  • The History of the Royal Society

    4–7 January 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring

     
  • The Restoration

    Melvyn Bragg examines the reign of Charles II and discusses whether the Restoration brought peace and prosperity to England or was an unstable period that culminated in revolution.

    15 February 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Goldie, Richard Ollard, Clare Jackson

     
  • The Royal Society

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how the formation of the Royal Society heralded the dawning of a new scientific era in the 17th century.

    23 March 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Stephen Pumfrey, Lisa Jardine, Michael Hunter

     
  • Philosophers of pessimism (3)

  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Schopenhauer

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the pessimistic philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his extraordinary influence.

    29 October 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Beatrice Han-Pile, Christopher Janaway

     
  • Epistemology of science (3)

  • Logical Positivism

    Melvyn Bragg and guests including Barry Smith discuss Logical Positivism, the radical philosophy of the Vienna Circle.

    2 July 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Barry Smith, Nancy Cartwright, Thomas Uebel

     
  • Ockham's Razor

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the philosophical idea of Ockham’s Razor and the medieval philosopher who gave his name to it, William of Ockham.

    31 May 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony Kenny, Marilyn Adams, Richard Alan Cross

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • 20th-century mystics (3)

  • Aldous Huxley's Brave New World

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Aldous Huxley's dystopian 1932 novel Brave New World and its vision of a future of test tube babies, free love and round-the-clock surveillance.

    9 April 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: David Bradshaw, Daniel Pick, Michèle Barrett

     
  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Proust

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and achievements of the 19th century French novelist Marcel Proust whose 3000 page work À La Recherche du Temps Perdu has been called the definitive modern novel.

    17 April 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jacqueline Rose, Malcolm Bowie, Robert Fraser

     
  • Looting (3)

  • Carthage's Destruction

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the complete destruction of Carthage by Rome, a pivotal moment in world history.

    12 February 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mary Beard, Jo Quinn, Ellen O'Gorman

     
  • Constantinople Siege and Fall

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 1453 siege of Constantinople. A bitter and bloody 53 days that ended a thousand years of the Byzantine Empire.

    28 December 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roger Crowley, Judith Herrin, Colin Imber

     
  • The Boxer Rebellion

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Boxer Rebellion, when the Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists purged China of foreign influences in the summer of 1900.

    19 March 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Frances Wood, Rana Mitter, R. G. Tiedemann

     
  • German librarians (3)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • The Brothers Grimm

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the fairy tales collected by the Brothers Grimm and what they can tell us about the German imagination and 19th-century romantic nationalism.

    5 February 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliette Wood, Marina Warner, Tony Phelan

     
  • 19th-century deaths from tuberculosis (3)

  • Bolivar

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and times of Simon Bolivar, hero of the revolutionary wars that liberated Spanish America from Spain.

    30 October 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony McFarlane, John Fisher, Catherine Davies

     
  • Kierkegaard

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the rich and radical ideas of Soren Kierkegaard, often called the father of Existentialism.

    20 March 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Clare Carlisle, John Lippitt

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Human evolution (3)

  • Darwin: On the Origins of Charles Darwin

    Melvyn Bragg presents a series about the life and work of Charles Darwin. Darwin's early life and time at Cambridge, where his interests shifted from religion to natural science.

    5 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jim Moore, Steve Jones, David Norman, Colin Higgins

     
  • Human Evolution

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the story of human evolution, a tale not of one species, but of many – some of whom walked the Earth at the same time.

    16 February 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Steve Jones, Fred Spoor, Margaret Clegg

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • Early modern period (3)

  • The Baroque Movement

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the culture of the Baroque, from Bach and Caavaggio to the Colonnades of St Peter’s.

    20 November 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: T. C. W. Blanning, Nigel Aston, Helen Hills

     
  • The Divine Right of Kings

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Divine Right of Kings. The idea that kingly authority derives from God alone bit deep into the culture of 17th century Britain.

    11 October 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Justin Champion, Thomas Healy, Clare Jackson

     
  • The Renaissance

    Melvyn Bragg explores the veracity of modern claims about the Renaissance and whether our current perceptions about its role in cultural history stem from a 19th century historian.

    8 June 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Francis Ames-Lewis, Peter Burke, Evelyn Welch

     
  • Anthologists (3)

  • Jorge Luis Borges

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the Argentinian master of the short story, Jorge Luis Borges.

    4 January 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Edwin Williamson, Efraín Kristal, Evelyn Fishburn

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • Political concepts (3)

  • Freedom

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what it is to be free, how freedom became such a powerful value and whether there is such a thing as natural freedom or if it is always culturally defined.

    4 July 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Keane, Bernard Williams, Annabel Brett

     
  • Progress

    Melvyn Bragg examines whether while mankind has grown in years and knowledge, it has also progressed in terms of happiness and a truer understanding of the human condition.

    18 November 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Anthony O'Hear, Adam Phillips

     
  • The Social Contract

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Social Contract. A key idea in political philosophy, it states that political authority is held through a contract with those to be ruled.

    7 February 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Susan James, Karen O'Brien

     
  • Holy Grail (3)

  • Merlin

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Merlin, prophet, magician, king maker and the original mad man of the woods, distraught at the death of his lord in battle.

    30 June 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliette Wood, Stephen Knight, Peter Forshaw

     
  • The Fisher King

    Melvyn Bragg and guests will be delving into the world of medieval myth and legend in pursuit of the powerful and enigmatic Fisher King.

    17 January 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Stephen Knight, Juliette Wood

     
  • The Holy Grail

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the sacred allure of the Holy Grail which has fascinated writers for a thousand years.

    15 May 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Carolyne Larrington, Jonathan Riley-Smith, Juliette Wood

     
  • Chemical elements (3)

  • Carbon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Carbon, the vital component of all living things

    15 June 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Harry Kroto, Monica Grady, Ken Teo

     
  • Chemical elements

    Melvyn Bragg explores the history of chemistry, the role of the elements and examines chemistry's continuing mission to understand the behaviour and relationship of these irreducible substances.

    25 May 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Paul Strathern, Mary Archer, John Murrell

     
  • Oxygen

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the discovery of Oxygen by Joseph Priestley and Antoine Lavoisier and the Anglo-French feud that accompanied it.

    15 November 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jenny Uglow, Hasok Chang

     
  • Deaths from stomach cancer (3)

  • Maxwell

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.

    2 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh

     
  • Napoleon and Wellington

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the comparative histories of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, two titans of nineteenth century history.

    25 October 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Roberts, Mike Broers, Belinda Beaton

     
  • Siegfried Sassoon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the war poet Siegfried Sassoon; a homosexual war hero who became a bitter opponent of the First World War and a devout Catholic.

    7 June 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Fran Brearton, Max Egremont

     
  • Applied and interdisciplinary physics (3)

  • Meteorology

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the fascinating and mystifying science of meteorology.

    6 March 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Vladimir Janković, Richard Hamblyn, Liba Taub

     
  • Oceanography

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the science of Oceanography which has attempted to unmask the enigma of the oceans and seas.

    22 November 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Margaret Deacon, Tony Rice, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Optics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the history of optics – from star gazing with a telescope to examining lice under a microscope

    1 March 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Bennett, Emily Winterburn

     
  • British agnostics (3)

  • Mill

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the 19th century political philosopher John Stuart Mill and his treatise On Liberty which is one of the sacred texts of liberalism.

    18 May 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Janet Radcliffe Richards, Alan Ryan

     
  • Popper

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the philosopher Karl Popper, author of The Open Society and a seminal thinker about science.

    8 February 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Worrall, Anthony O'Hear, Nancy Cartwright

     
  • Wittgenstein

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the greatest philosophers of the modern age has influenced contemporary culture with his ideas on language.

    4 December 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ray Monk, Barry Smith, Marie McGinn

     
  • German travel writers (3)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Humboldt

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Prussian naturalist and explorer, Alexander Von Humboldt. A hero in South America; Charles Darwin described him as ‘the greatest scientific traveller who ever lived’.

    28 September 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jason Wilson, Patricia Fara, Jim Secord

     
  • 19th-century travel writers (3)

  • Dickens

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the achievements of Charles Dickens What is his political and literary legacy to our age?

    12 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Rosemary Ashton, Michael Slater, John Bowen

     
  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Color scientists (3)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Maxwell

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and work of the often overlooked 19th century Scottish scientist, and his enormous contribution to the creation of the technological age in which we live.

    2 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Peter Harman, Joanna Haigh

     
  • German autobiographers (3)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Wagner

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life, and legacy of the German composer Richard Wagner, mentor of Nietzsche and disciple of Schopenhauer, who changed the face of 19th century opera.

    20 June 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Deathridge, Lucy Beckett, Michael Tanner

     
  • Leaders who took power by coup (3)

  • Catherine the Great

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Catherine the Great who set out to transform Russia from a semi-barbaric country into a model of the ideals of the 18th century French Enlightenment.

    23 February 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Janet Hartley, Simon Dixon, Tony Lentin

     
  • Lenin

    Melvyn Bragg investigates what drove the Soviet leader Lenin, and enabled him to develop a model to export communism and build an original political system that remained intact for over seventy years.

    16 March 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Robert Service, Vitali Vitaliev

     
  • Napoleon and Wellington

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the comparative histories of Napoleon and the Duke of Wellington, two titans of nineteenth century history.

    25 October 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Andrew Roberts, Mike Broers, Belinda Beaton

     
  • Computational fields of study (3)

  • Artificial Intelligence

    Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.

    8 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander

     
  • Artificial Intelligence

    Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.

    8 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander

     
  • Chaos Theory

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how Chaos Theory has affected our understanding of the universe and whether there might be an inherent order behind the fluctuations of the stock market or the British weather.

    16 May 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Greenfield, David Papineau, Neil Johnson

     
  • Emerging technologies (3)

  • Artificial Intelligence

    Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.

    8 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander

     
  • Artificial Intelligence

    Melvyn Bragg discusses artificial intelligence and whether a computer could imitate the operations of the human mind.

    8 December 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jon Agar, Alison Adam, Igor Aleksander

     
  • Genetic Engineering

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the implications of the developments in genetic engineering. Are such advances as the cloning of Dolly the sheep more for the benefit of scientists rather than for humanity?

    14 January 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Grahame Bulfield, Bryan Appleyard

     
  • Sources of knowledge (3)

  • Memory

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the significance of memory. Is it a repository of events waiting to be plucked to consciousness?

    29 May 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Martin Conway, Mike Kopelman, Kim Graham

     
  • Memory and Culture

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how our ways of remembering have changed and explores whether memory itself can remain forever unchanged in its role within our psychology.

    27 May 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Malcolm Bowie, Nancy Wood

     
  • Perception and the Senses

    Melvyn Bragg discusses perception: how the brain reacts to the mass of data continually crowding it and examines what governs our perception of the world.

    28 April 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gregory, David Moore, Gemma Calvert

     
  • Cognition (3)

  • Imagination

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the creatives forces of the imagination, that companion of artists, scientists, leaders and visionaries.

    28 November 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Susan Stuart, Steven Mithen, Semir Zeki

     
  • Imagination and Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg investigates how neuroscience can help to explain the enigmas of consciousness and how we are able to imagine things when they are not there; ideas that have long troubled philosophers.

    29 June 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Gerald Edelman, Igor Aleksander, Margaret Boden

     
  • The Mind/Body Problem

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?

    13 January 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James

     
  • Good and evil (3)

  • Evil

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the notion of evil in western philosophy.

    3 May 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jones Erwin, Stephen Mulhall, Margaret Atkins

     
  • Good and Evil

    Melvyn Bragg examines what the discoveries of Darwin and our knowledge of the true physiological nature and history of man has done for us in terms understanding our concepts of good and evil.

    1 April 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Leszek Kołakowski, Galen Strawson

     
  • Heroism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what defines a hero, and their place in classical society. Nietzsche, the Romantics, Renaissance idealism and classical tragedy are brought to bear on the age old heroic ideal.

    6 May 2004

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, A. C. Grayling, Paul Cartledge

     
  • Christendom (3)

  • Byzantium

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the culture, history and legacy of the eastern Byzantine Empire, and examines why it has so often been sidelined and undermined by historians.

    19 July 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Charlotte Roueché, John Julius Norwich, Liz James

     
  • The Renaissance

    Melvyn Bragg explores the veracity of modern claims about the Renaissance and whether our current perceptions about its role in cultural history stem from a 19th century historian.

    8 June 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Francis Ames-Lewis, Peter Burke, Evelyn Welch

     
  • The Schism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses events surrounding the 11th century division of medieval Christendom into what became the Eastern Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church.

    16 October 2003

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Henrietta Leyser, Norman Housley, Jonathan Shepard

     
  • Psychoanalysis (3)

  • Psychoanalysis and Literature

    Melvyn Bragg assesses whether Freudian theory reinvents our appreciation of literature before Freud, and explores how important Freudian analysis is to understanding the great works of literature.

    9 November 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Phillips, Malcolm Bowie, Lisa Appignanesi

     
  • Psychoanalysis and democracy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the impact of politics on psychoanalysis and how psychoanalysis itself attempts to resolve the conflicting ideas and voices within our minds.

    11 July 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Adam Phillips, Sally Alexander, Malcolm Bowie

     
  • Psychoanalysis and its Legacy

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the relevance of psychoanalysis at the end of the 20th century. Has it failed to develop and adapt to an age increasingly dominated by science?

    4 February 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Juliet Mitchell, Adam Phillips

     
  • Religious philosophical concepts (3)

  • Evil

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the notion of evil in western philosophy.

    3 May 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Jones Erwin, Stephen Mulhall, Margaret Atkins

     
  • Good and Evil

    Melvyn Bragg examines what the discoveries of Darwin and our knowledge of the true physiological nature and history of man has done for us in terms understanding our concepts of good and evil.

    1 April 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Leszek Kołakowski, Galen Strawson

     
  • The Soul

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the spectrum of ideas about the soul, the extent of human individuality, and the history of thought concerning immortality and the afterlife.

    6 June 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Sorabji, Ruth Padel, Martin Palmer

     
  • Mathematics (3)

  • Mathematics

    Melvyn Bragg examines the way perceptions of the importance of mathematics have fluctuated in the 20th century and what mathematics can reveal about how life began, and how it might continue.

    6 May 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Brian Butterworth

     
  • Mathematics and Platonism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether mathematics is a process of invention or of discovery. And if it is a discovery, how can we be sure that the mathematic we think we have discovered is the right one?

    11 January 2001

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Ian Stewart, Margaret Wertheim, John D. Barrow

     
  • Maths and Storytelling

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the similar origins of mathematics and storytelling which both require a shape and structure to make any sense. But is it possible to apply mathematical logic to literature?

    30 September 1999

    listen ↗

    Featuring: John Allen Paulos, Marina Warner

     
  • American male essayists, American male poets (3)

  • Auden

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss WH Auden's life and poetry from Europe before WWII, reflecting on his travels to Spain, China and Germany and the rise of totalitarianism.

    19 December 2019

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Mark Ford, Janet Montefiore, Jeremy Noel-Tod

     
  • Thoreau and the American Idyll

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the American 19th century writer and philosopher, Henry David Thoreau

    15 January 2009

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Tim Morris, Stephen Fender

     
  • Walt Whitman

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the innovative 19th-century poet, who broke away from European literary traditions to become a key figure in the development of American culture.

    27 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Peter Riley, Mark Ford

     
  • Monarchs of England before 1066, House of Wessex (3)

  • Alfred and the Battle of Edington

    Melvyn Bragg discusses King Alfred, the defeat of the Vikings at Battle of Edington and Alfred's project to create a culture of Englishness.

    7 April 2005

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Richard Gameson, Sarah Foot, John Hines

     
  • Athelstan

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the reign of King Athelstan, whose military exploits united much of England, Scotland and Wales under one ruler for the first time.

    1 July 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sarah Foot, John Hines, Richard Gameson

     
  • Cnut

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Danish prince who became King of England in 1016, and restored stability and prosperity to the troubled country he inherited.

    6 April 2023

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Erin Goeres, Pragya Vohra, Elizabeth Tyler

     
  • 18th-century educators, 19th-century historians, 18th-century historians (3)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Hegel's Philosophy of History

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hegel's ideas on history as the progress of the consciousness of freedom, and whether we enjoy more freedom now than those in past centuries.

    26 May 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Sally Sedgwick, Robert Stern, Stephen Houlgate

     
  • 19th-century French women writers, 19th-century French novelists (3)

  • Colette

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the novels and life of one of the most remarkable writers of the last century, whose Claudine series was first published under her husband's name.

    27 January 2022

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Diana Holmes, Michèle Roberts, Belinda Jack

     
  • George Sand

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work and life of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin who in C19th France wrote many extremely successful novels, under the name George Sand

    6 February 2020

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Belinda Jack, Angela Ryan, Nigel Harkness

     
  • Germaine de Staël

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the ideas, works and life of Germaine de Stael (1766-1817), a literary critic, author, opponent of Napoleon and developer of Romanticism.

    16 November 2017

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Catriona Seth, Alison Finch, Katherine Astbury

     
  • Ancient Greek epistemologists, Ancient Greek ethicists (3)

  • Heraclitus

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek thinker Heraclitus, immortalised by later scholars as the Weeping Philosopher.

    8 December 2011

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Peter Adamson, James Warren

     
  • Plato's Gorgias

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss arguably the most personal of Plato's dialogues in which he examines the values that led to the execution of his mentor Socrates by drinking hemlock

    25 November 2021

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, Frisbee Sheffield, Fiona Leigh

     
  • Socrates

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the iconic Greek philosopher Socrates. He is the founder of Western philosophy, he was funny, irritating and rude but left not a single word in his own hand.

    27 September 2007

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Angie Hobbs, David Sedley, Paul Millett

     
  • Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for English constituencies, British MPs 1780–1784 (3)

  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Edward Gibbon

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and ideas of the writer of The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, one of the most celebrated works of its kind.

    17 June 2021

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    Featuring: David Womersley, Charlotte Roberts, Karen O’Brien

     
  • Wilberforce

    In an unusual edition of In Our Time, marking the 1807 Abolition of the Slave Trade, Melvyn Bragg leaves the studio to examine the life of William Wilberforce.

    22 February 2007

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    Featuring

     
  • American novels adapted into television shows, American novels adapted into plays, American novels adapted into films (3)

  • Great Gatsby

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss one of the great American novels of the 20th Century, where inexplicably rich Jay Gatsby aims to win Daisy Buchanan from her millionaire husband.

    14 January 2021

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    Featuring: Sarah Churchwell, Philip McGowan, William Blazek

     
  • Moby Dick

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Moby-Dick (1851) by Herman Melville, the story of Ahab and the white whale, the most popular of around 1,000 ideas that listeners submitted.

    7 December 2017

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    Featuring: Bridget Bennett, Katie McGettigan, Graham Thompson

     
  • Uncle Tom's Cabin

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss 'Uncle Tom's Cabin', the bestselling American novel of the 19th century which has slavery as its central theme.

    8 June 2006

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    Featuring: Celeste-Marie Bernier, Sarah Meer, Clive Webb

     
  • Historical negationism in ancient Egypt, Pharaohs of the Eighteenth Dynasty of Egypt (3)

  • Akhenaten

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Elizabeth Frood, Richard Parkinson and Kate Spence discuss Akhenaten, the ruler who brought revolutionary change to ancient Egypt.

    1 October 2009

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    Featuring: Richard Parkinson, Elizabeth Frood, Kate Spence

     
  • Hatshepsut

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Hatshepsut, the woman considered one of Egypt's most successful pharaohs.

    6 November 2014

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    Featuring: Elizabeth Frood, Kate Spence, Campbell Price

     
  • Tutankhamun

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the the work of Howard Carter's team in 1922, and the extraordinary contents of Tutankhamun's tomb and what it revealed of Egyptian history

    26 December 2019

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    Featuring: Elizabeth Frood, Christina Riggs, John Taylor

     
  • William III of England, Mary II of England (3)

  • The Glencoe Massacre

    Melvyn Bragg and guests Karin Bowie, Murray Pittock and Daniel Szechi discuss the 1692 Glencoe Massacre, why it happened, and its lasting repercussions.

    21 January 2010

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    Featuring: Murray Pittock, Karin Bowie, Daniel Szechi

     
  • The Glorious Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg examines the Glorious Revolution of 1688 but were the events of 1688 really either Glorious or Revolutionary?

    19 April 2001

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    Featuring: John Spurr, Rosemary Sweet, Scott Mandelbrote

     
  • The Treaty of Limerick

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the impact of the treaty ending the Williamite War in 1691, with the disbanding of the Jacobite army and assertion of rights for the defeated gentry

    7 November 2019

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    Featuring: Jane Ohlmeyer, Clare Jackson, Thomas O'Connor

     
  • Irish modernist poets, Irish Nobel laureates (3)

  • Samuel Beckett

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the life and work of the author of Waiting for Godot, who lived in Paris and wrote in French as he found that more difficult than writing in English

    17 January 2019

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    Featuring: Steven Connor, Laura Salisbury, Mark Nixon

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

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    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

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    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • 1st-century BC Roman augurs, 1st-century BC Roman consuls (3)

  • Cicero

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Cicero's political ideas on laws, duty, tyrants and the republic, which he developed as the Roman Republic was threatened by Caesar and civil wars.

    25 January 2018

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    Featuring: Melissa Lane, Catherine Steel, Valentina Arena

     
  • Julius Caesar

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and reputation of Julius Caesar, one of the most intriguing figures of Roman history.

    2 October 2014

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    Featuring: Christopher Pelling, Catherine Steel, Maria Wyke

     
  • The Augustan Age

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the political regime and cultural influence of the Roman Emperor Augustus.

    11 June 2009

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    Featuring: Mary Beard, Catharine Edwards, Duncan Kennedy

     
  • Founding Fathers of the United States, 18th-century American writers, People of the American Enlightenment (3)

  • Benjamin Franklin

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the scientist, writer, printer, diplomat and American founding father Benjamin Franklin.

    1 March 2012

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    Featuring: Simon Middleton, Simon Newman, Patricia Fara

     
  • Thomas Paine's Common Sense

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Thomas Paine's pamphlet Common Sense, which was published in 1776 and bolstered support for American independence.

    21 January 2016

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    Featuring: Kathleen Burk, Nicholas Guyatt, Peter Thompson

     
  • Washington and the American Revolution

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the first President of the United States, George Washington, and the people and ideas that saw the American Revolution overthrow British rule in 1775.

    24 June 2004

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    Featuring: Carol Berkin, Simon Middleton, Colin Bonwick

     
  • Honorary Members of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Recipients of the Matteucci Medal (3)

  • Rutherford

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Ernest Rutherford. He is seen as the father of nuclear science, a great charismatic figure who mapped the landscape of the sub-atomic world.

    19 February 2004

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    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Jim Al-Khalili, Patricia Fara

     
  • The Curies

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the scientific achievements of the Curie family, Marie and Pierre and their daughter Irene Joliot-Curie, all three of whom won Nobel Prizes.

    26 March 2015

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    Featuring: Patricia Fara, Robert Fox, Steven T Bramwell

     
  • Thomas Edison

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the work of Thomas Edison, one of the great inventors and cultural figures of modern America.

    9 December 2010

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    Featuring: Simon Schaffer, Kathleen Burk, Iwan Morus

     
  • Bosons, Force carriers (3)

  • Higgs Boson

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Higgs Boson; the God particle, which explains how all mass behaves. It is a legend among physicists but does it exist?

    18 November 2004

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    Featuring: Jim Al-Khalili, David Wark, Roger Cashmore

     
  • The Graviton

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the search for the Graviton, a hypothetical elementary particle that offers a unifying theory of gravitational force.

    24 November 2005

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    Featuring: Roger Cashmore, Jim Al-Khalili, Sheila Rowan

     
  • The Photon

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the photon, the fundamental particle associated with light.

    12 February 2015

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    Featuring: Frank Close, Wendy Flavell, Susan Cartwright

     
  • Ancient history of Pakistan, Ancient history of Afghanistan (3)

  • Ashoka the Great

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the emperor Ashoka the Great, one of the most celebrated rulers in Indian history.

    5 February 2015

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    Featuring: Jessica Frazier, Naomi Appleton, Richard Gombrich

     
  • The Sassanid Empire

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Sassanian Empire, a grand imperial rival to the Roman Empire.

    13 December 2007

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    Featuring: Hugh N. Kennedy, Vesta Sarkhosh Curtis, James Howard-Johnston

     
  • The Silk Road

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the Silk Road, the trade routes which spanned Asia for over a thousand years, carrying Buddhism to China and paper-making and gunpowder westwards.

    3 December 2009

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    Featuring: Frances Wood, Tim Barrett, Naomi Standen

     
  • 18th-century Irish writers, 18th-century Irish male writers, 18th-century Anglo-Irish people (3)

  • Bishop Berkeley

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the philosopher George Berkeley, one of the most significant thinkers of the 18th century.

    20 March 2014

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    Featuring: Peter Millican, Tom Stoneham, Michela Massimi

     
  • Edmund Burke

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the work of the philosopher, politician and writer Edmund Burke, whose views on revolution in America and France were hugely influential.

    3 June 2010

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    Featuring: Karen O'Brien, Richard Bourke, John Keane

     
  • Swift's A Modest Proposal

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Jonathan Swift's satirical 1729 pamphlet A Modest Proposal, which reveals much about attitudes to the Irish and the poor in 18th-Century Britain.

    29 January 2009

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    Featuring: John Mullan, Judith Hawley, Ian McBride

     
  • French anti-fascists, French anti-capitalists (3)

  • Camus

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the Nobel Prize winning Algerian-French writer and existentialist philosopher Albert Camus.

    3 January 2008

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    Featuring: Peter Dunwoodie, David Walker, Christina Howells

     
  • Sartre

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and works of French novelist, playwright and philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

    7 October 2004

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    Featuring: Jonathan Rée, Benedict O'Donohoe, Christina Howells

     
  • Simone Weil

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the French philosopher and social activist Simone Weil. Admired by Albert Camus and Iris Murdoch, she achieved a great deal in her short life.

    15 November 2012

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    Featuring: Beatrice Han-Pile, Stephen Plant, David Levy

     
  • Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sturm und Drang (3)

  • Goethe

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the great German polymath Johann Wolfgang Goethe - novelist, dramatist, poet, humanist, scientist and philosopher.

    6 April 2006

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    Featuring: Tim Blanning, Sarah Colvin, W. Daniel Wilson

     
  • Goethe and the Science of the Enlightenment

    Melvyn Bragg assesses the scientific legacy of the 18th century German poet and thinker Goethe, who gave us the term morphology and is sometimes even credited with inventing biology itself.

    10 February 2000

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    Featuring: Nicholas Boyle, Simon Schaffer

     
  • Sturm und Drang

    Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the 18th-century German artistic movement known as Sturm und Drang, whose best-known exponents included Goethe and Schiller.

    14 October 2010

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    Featuring: T. C. W. Blanning, Susanne Kord, Maike Oergel

     
  • Symbolist dramatists and playwrights, 19th-century Irish poets, 19th-century Irish dramatists and playwrights (3)

  • Oscar Wilde

    Melvyn Bragg discusses Oscar Wilde, the Aesthetes and his literary legacy. Was Wilde a reactionary - the last of the romantics - or was he the midwife to modernism?

    6 December 2001

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    Featuring: Valentine Cunningham, Regenia Gagnier, Neil Sammells

     
  • Yeats and Irish Politics

    Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the poet W.B. Yeats and Irish politics from the suspension of home rule to the division of Ireland.

    17 April 2008

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Fran Brearton, Warwick Gould

     
  • Yeats and Mysticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the life and beliefs of the Irish Poet W B Yeats and explores how a passion for magic and mysticism served and stood alongside his poetry.

    31 January 2002

    listen ↗

    Featuring: Roy Foster, Warwick Gould, Brenda Maddox

     
  • Metaphysics of mind, Consciousness (3)

  • Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg examines why the elusiveness and impenetrability of consciousness continues to fascinate both philosophers and scientists. Is the human mind just not built to understand its own basis?

    25 November 1999

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    Featuring: Ted Honderich, Roger Penrose

     
  • The Brain and Consciousness

    Melvyn Bragg discusses how our increased knowledge of the functioning of the brain has changed our feelings about our own natures, and our approach to the behaviour and treatment of others.

    19 November 1998

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    Featuring: Steven Rose, Dan Robinson

     
  • The Mind/Body Problem

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the history of thought about the mind/body problem in philosophy. Does the mind rule the body or the body rule the mind? And where does the mind reside?

    13 January 2005

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    Featuring: A. C. Grayling, Julian Baggini, Sue James

     
  • People from Stratford-upon-Avon, Shakespeare family, 16th-century English male actors, William Shakespeare, English male stage actors, Burials in Warwickshire, People educated at King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon, King's Men (playing company), 17th-century English male actors (3)

  • Shakespeare and Literary Criticism

    Melvyn Bragg discusses the enduring popular and academic appeal of Shakespeare and examines whether literary criticism and the academic institution ruins the pleasure of reading.

    4 March 1999

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    Featuring: Harold Bloom, Jacqueline Rose

     
  • Shakespeare's Life

    Melvyn Bragg discusses what we know about the life of William Shakespeare, a tantalising conundrum that has exercised minds since the day the playwright died.

    15 March 2001

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    Featuring: Katherine Duncan-Jones, John Sutherland, Grace Ioppolo

     
  • Shakespeare's Work

    Melvyn Bragg discusses whether the work of William Shakespeare is 'not of an age but for all time' or increasingly irrelevant museum pieces embalmed in out of reach language.

    11 May 2000

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    Featuring: Frank Kermode, Michael Bogdanov, Germaine Greer